Tag Archives: Daphne DuMaurier

Shelter Me by Alex McAulay

Posted on by
4

Synopsis:
Sent to a convent on the Welsh Coast during the Blitz, a teenage girl finds herself on the run and afraid for her life–from the scarred, terrifying Mother Superior.

Review:
I am hoping that Alex McAulay is planning a follow-up to Shelter Me, because while he wrapped up the plot quite well, I certainly did not feel I was done with Maggie’s story. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say that where she winds up at the end is just as tantalizing as anything that comes before.

It’s not for nothing that Maggie keeps herself occupied on her long train ride from London to Wales with a copy of Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca. The headmistress of the Gothic’s influences are all over Shelter Me, though the plot has more in common with the lesser know and twice as scary Jamaica Inn. Storm-lashed rocky coast–check. Smugglers–check. Beseiged pseudo-orphan–check. Subbing Wales for DuMaurier’s Cornwall, McAulay hits all the genre’s notes extremely well and even manages to conjure up a believable female protagonist.

I really like when YA authors step outside of the dominant modes of realism or popcorn serials. Like Laurie Halse Anderson in Chains, McAulay writes historical fiction that feels fresh and urgent, and is likely to inspire readers to want to learn more about the time period. He’s not after goals as lofty as Anderson is, but he’s done his homework and brings the Blitz to life. I’m very glad that I got to check this one out and looking forward to discussing it with other readers.

Posted in American Literature | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Replies

Top 20 Meme

Posted on by
1

Picked this up from Becky:

The rules: Top twenty favourite books in no particular order. Don’t think about it for too long. Take twenty minutes only to compile your list. Bold the ones you’ve read, or reread, since you’ve started blogging. Include novels, non fiction and plays.

1. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
3. Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
4. Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King
5. Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb
6. Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis
7. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
8. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
9. Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
10. Asylum by Patrick McGrath
11. Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
12. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
13. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
14. Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
15. Private Demons by Judy Oppenheimer
16. Bird by Bird by Anne LaMott
17. The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris
18. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
19. The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler
20. Birth at Home by Sheila Kitzinger

100 Most Influential Books by Women

Posted on by
11

Via BookGal–I’ve bolded the ones I’ve read.

1. Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
2. Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire
3. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
4. Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
5. Virginia Woolf, The Waves
6. Virginia Woolf, Orlando
7. Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
8. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
9. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
10. Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
11. Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
12. Nadine Gordimer, Burger’s Daughter
13. Harriette Simpson Arnow, The Dollmaker
14. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
15. Willa Cather, My Ántonia
16. Erica Jong, Fear of Flying
17. Erica Jong, Fanny
18. Joy Kogawa, Obasan
19. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
20. Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child
21. Doris Lessing, The Grass Is Singing
22. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
23. Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
24. Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres
25. Lore Segal, Her First American
26. Alice Walker, The Color Purple
27. Alice Walker, The Third Life of Grange Copeland
28. Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
29. Muriel Spark, Memento Mori
30. Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
31. Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina
32. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
33. Susan Fromberg Shaeffer, Anya
34. Cynthia Ozick, Trust
35. Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
36. Amy Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife
37. Ann Beattie, Chilly Scenes of Winter
38. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
39. Joan Didion, A Book of Common Prayer
40. Joan Didion, Play It as It Lays
41. Mary McCarthy, The Group
42. Mary McCarthy, The Company She Keeps
43. Grace Paley, The Little Disturbances of Man
44. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
45. Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
46. Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart
47. Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood
48. Mona Simpson, Anywhere But Here
49. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
50. Toni Morrison, Beloved
51. Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm
52. Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr. Fortune’s Maggot
53. Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools
54. Laura Riding, Progress of Stories
55. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
56. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower
57. Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits
58. A.S. Byatt, Possession
59. Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
60. Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle
61. Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
62. Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus
63. Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
64. Katherine Dunn, Geek Love
65. Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
66. Barbara Pym, Excellent Women
67. Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
68. Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
69. Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist
70. Nancy Willard, Things Invisible to See
71. Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
72. Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Disturbances in the Field
73. Rosellen Brown, Civil Wars
74. Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra
75. Harriet Doerr, The Mountain Lion
76. Stevie Smith. Novel on Yellow Paper
77. E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
78. Rebecca Goldstein, The Mind-Body Problem
79. P.D. James, The Children of Men
80. Ursula Hegi, Stones From the River
81. Fay Weldon, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
82. Katherine Mansfield, Collected Stories
83. Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills
84. Louise Erdrich, The Beet Queen
85. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
86. Edna O’Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy
87. Margaret Drabble, Realms of Gold
88. Margaret Drabble, The Waterfall
89. Dawn Powell, The Locusts Have No King
90. Marilyn French, The Women’s Room
91. Eudora Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter
92. Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries (I just reviewed this one!)
93. Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John
94. Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle
95. Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
96. Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head
97. Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day
98. Alice Hoffman, The Drowning Season
99. Sue Townsend, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
100. Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

Umm… no Jane Austen?

Posted in On Reading | Tagged , , , , , , , | 11 Replies

Answers–13 Opening Lines–How Many Can You Guess?

Posted on by
21

I mentioned that I had to go on maternity leave for my reading jobs, so my On Reading posts will no longer mean that I read a book for work. I could be a stickler for consistency and just stop doing them, but they’re just too much fun–especially when I catch the fever for a really great meme like the one accidentally started by the Accidental Novelist, and picked up by Poodlerat.

Here are 13 opening lines (or two) to books that are beloved by me, the Superfast Reader. See if you can guess where they come from. I’ll update the post with the answers as the correct ones come in. Continue reading →

Three Character Meme

Posted on by
2

Found this meme courtesy of Amy, the Sleepy Reader.

Name up to three characters . . .

1. You wish were real so you could meet them: Continue reading →

10 Books I Can’t Live Without

Posted on by
4

I found this meme over at Bookfoolery and Babble, and heaven knows I love lists. These are the 10 books that form the backbone of my library, the 10 books with which I would never part, the 10 books that I will always reread at every stage of my life. That’s not to say that I could live without any books but these, but that I need these books to be me. Continue reading →