Interlude in Verona – The Lost Dresses of Italy by M.A. McLaughlin

Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894) was an English poetess of Italian descent, and a member, with her two brothers, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Rossetti, of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement in art and literature. Many of her poems, including "Who Has Seen the Wind?", are familiar classics. Her only rival for fame and accomplishment among female English poets would be Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
In 1864, Christina and William, along with their mother, Frances, traveled to Italy. This novel is built around the author's imagination of the events of that trip, and also has an alternate timeline in 1947, when a fictional American clothing historian and war widow, Marianne Baxter, comes to Verona at the invitation of her old college friend Rufina. Marianne is to mount an exhibition of three dresses purported to have belonged to Rossetti which were found in a trunk in a hidden room in the (also fictional) Fondazione Museo Menigatti, located in a war-damaged palazzo.

Alessandro, the museum director, is both reluctant to have Marianne there and demands that she follow a number of "rules" that will make it difficult for her to do the work she has traveled from Boston to complete, but she is determined.

As Marianne works on the dresses, she uncovers mysterious notes and other items hidden inside the garments, and becomes caught up in why Christina placed them there. The alternating chapters on Christina and Marianne create a lushly romantic literary mystery that is eventually resolved by a most unexpected conclusion.

The author has clearly done her research on the works of Rossetti and what is known of her life, while creating a multi-layered characterization for her during her Italian sojourn. Her descriptions of the dresses, and the Veronese and other settings, during both timelines, are highly detailed and convincing, right down to the food eaten by the Rossettis and Marianne.

A very appealing work of historical fiction and mystery for those interested in literature, art, vintage textiles, and more.

Back Then – Desperately Seeking Susan directed by Susan Seidelman

I am happy to say that the 1985 film "Desperately Seeking Susan", a modernist take on the classic screwball comedy, has lost none of its charm, grit, whimsy, or subtle feminist appeal. New York City, however, is very changed since then. One could argue that the cleaned-up city is a safer environment, and that may be true – certainly it's much more pleasant to ride on subways that are air conditioned in summer, heated in winter, and are nearly graffiti-free, despite the overblown handwringing over the far-reduced crime rate of today vs. what we dealt with back then – but you could drop me (in the guise of my younger self) into the East Village that I knew back then and I'd be a happy camper. Familiar aspects of the city that once was – pay phones on every block, personal ads in newspapers, and storage lockers in the Port Authority Bus Terminal are integral to the advancement of the plot but they are all gone now. I preferred that tougher but more individualistic city scene than the more homogenized place New York feels like today. 

The movie starred Rosanna Arquette, Madonna, and Aidan Quinn, with Robert Joy and John Turturro in smaller roles. It's fair to say that the movie helped make Madonna a household name.

Arquette's character is Roberta, a frustrated suburban housewife in New Jersey who follows the personal ads she reads in a newspaper, especially between Susan (Madonna), and her boyfriend, Jim (Robert Joy). Susan is constantly on the move, living a slightly less than completely honest existence, and Jim is a musician in a touring band. Roberta, seeing that Susan and Jim are planning to meet in downtown Manhattan at Battery Park, decides to travel into the city and observe their reunion. 

A series of unexpected events occur that lead to Roberta experiencing amnesia when she falls and hits her head, while Susan is trying to escape from a unscrupulous man who is pursuing her after she stole a pair of what turn out to be priceless antique earrings. When Roberta wakes up from her injury, she believes she is Susan. Meanwhile, Jim has asked his best buddy Dez (Aiden Quinn) to keep an eye on Susan while he is away with his band. Dez mistakes Roberta for Susan, and the twists and turns continue from there...

To avoid giving any more away, my advice to my readers is to locate a streaming service or DVD of the movie, and prepare to enjoy!

Murder at the Market – A Sliced Vegetarian by Liesa Malik

A light and cozy murder mystery set in a small town outside of Denver, CO. Daisy Arthur, a 50-something widow, tries to come to the rescue of Brian, a young man with developmental issues, who is accused of a brutal murder the local supermarket where he works. 

Ginny, a similarly challenged young woman, his girlfriend, is a close friend of Daisy, and also works at the market. Her father, Gabe, is the local police lieutenant who also happens to be Daisy's sometime boyfriend. He is very protective of his daughter, and also determined to prove that Brian committed the crime. His anger management issues don't help in his relationships.

Daisy gets herself into a number of compromising and dangerous situations while trying to help solve the murder and get Brian freed.

Of course, all's well that ends well. An entertaining book that is very supportive of individuals with learning disabilities and limitations, a big plus, though it is handled with a bit of a heavy hand.

No, No, No – Ceremony of the Innocent by Taylor Caldwell

Every day I receive a list of bargain e-books from Book Bub. Most are low-priced, and occasionally there's even a freebie. If I find a free book of interest available on Prime, I add it to my Kindle/iPad. I also get others from Edelweiss and other sources. Between those, and the ones on my shelves and in several full shopping bags, I don't think I'll ever have the time to read them all – especially since I keep finding new and enticing titles at the library. It's a dilemma that my book loving friends will understand.

Ceremony of the Innocent (the correct title) was one of those Book Bub books, and I read a little of it on its Prime page, and initially intrigued, I requested it from my library. I was somewhat shocked when I received it but I wanted to give it a chance: The cover art and copy of this mass market paperback version is lurid and repulsive, but so indicative of the 70s, when it was first published. Refusing to be put off, I decided to delve further into it. 

I was drawn at first into the sad story of the impoverished young Ellen Porter and her Aunt May, who raised her. The time is roughly the 1890s, and they live in a small Pennsylvania town, somewhere in the northeastern area of the state. Ellen is a tall, beautiful redheaded girl who looks older and more mature than her thirteen years; May is a seamstress who also works as a maid to try to make ends meet, she is probably barely forty but poverty has aged and broken her. Seeing no alternative, she forces Ellen to end her education and persuades her client and employer, the mayor's wife, to take Ellen on as a maid in training, saying she is already fourteen, though with her height and mature looks, Ellen might pass for fifteen or sixteen. 

The small town constantly gossips about Ellen and May. Some say she is May's illegitimate daughter, that with her flaming hair and mature body, she must be sexually active – a harlot. Of course she is none of that, and is rather just a poor disadvantaged girl who looks different from the pale blondes who are considered the town beauties. There seems to be no future for her other than a life of struggle and servitude.

One day, though, she meets Jeremy, the handsome, well-educated and successful son of her employers. She is overwhelmed, as is he. Their brief encounter will stay with both of them until they meet again, and he sweeps her off and marries her.

From this point forward, the book becomes a strange stew of their continued love story, politics, religion, and commentary on the America of the early decades of the twentieth century. I found the policies she eventually ascribed to Jeremy, who had been elected to Congress, and who had originally seemed so kind and passionate, to be distasteful and hateful, to say the least. She portrayed many of the leading progressive political figures of the time with a peculiar, distorted view, bordering on what felt like an underlying paranoia, or at the very least, a deep hate for working and middle class Americans, immigrants, and others. At the same time, she seemed to warn against excesses of greed, power and capitalism, while supporting both communism and fascism almost simultaneously.

All in all, in retrospect, the entire novel becomes as lurid and offensive as this edition's cover. Her prose is dense, melodramatic, and wandering, but I kept reading in the hope that somehow Ellen would overcome her struggles – let's just say she didn't. I can only wonder how this book became the "national bestseller" touted on the cover.

Hearts of Gold – Curves for Days by Laura Moher

I don't usually choose "romance" novels but I took a chance on this one since it featured a less than ideally sized (meaning not thin) woman, at least one who saw herself that way. I was not disappointed.

Rose, our heroine, is a thirty-something woman who comes from a tough working-class background, and is alone in the world. She comes into a winning lottery ticket that nets her 80 million dollars, and finds herself surrounded with hangers-on and worse in Indianapolis. Wanting to escape that, as well as traumatic memories that led her to drop out of high school, after securing legal and financial help for managing the money, she buys a car and starts driving, eventually landing in a small town in North Carolina, where she begins to create a new life for herself.

Angus, also in his thirties, is a life-long resident of Rose's new town, and has a repetition for his gruff demeanor. He has a one-man contractor business, but also is a part-time mental counselor working with his fellow veterans, who are sufferers of PTSD, have drug and alcohol problems, and in some cases, debilitating effects of injuries from their service.

Rose buys a fixer-upper home and hires Angus as her contractor. Each of them is wary of the other, but gradually they form a friendship, and eventually more. How that all happens, and how the author presents Rose's desire and plan to do something productive with her newly-acquired money, and Angus's work with his clients, along with their ups and downs with each other, makes this novel quite a cut above what the reader might expect from romance fiction. I enjoyed it, was a bit sorry to have it end, and will look for more from this author. 

A Tale of Two Eileens: The Switch by Beth O'Leary

Such an easy to enjoy novel, set in London and a small village in the Yorkshire Dales, about two women, twenty-nine-ish Leena and her seventy-nine year old grandmother Eileen.

Leena is a high-octane rising-star executive at a consulting company in London, known for her outstanding presentations. She's in a relationship with Ethan, something of a male counterpart. Eileen is supercharged too, but as the get-it-done, list-making center of village activities, serving on every committee and a friend to all. Her former husband, Wade, left her for a dance instructor, but she's doing just fine without him.

The two form a sandwich of a relationship with Marian, Leena's mother/Eileen's daughter. What they all share is their deep grief over the recent loss of Carla, Marian's younger daughter, to an agonizing death from cancer. Leena and Marian are currently estranged.

Leena has a panic attack and meltdown at a presentation, and her kind (fortunately) boss, Rebecca, forces her to take a two-month leave of absence so she can heal and regroup. Leena confides in Eileen, who urges her to visit in the village. They decide, on a whim, to switch places for the two months: Leena will stay in Eileen's village cottage and Eileen will go to London to Leena's apartment, which will be a chance for her to grab a taste of her youthful dream to be an independent woman in the city.

While the overall plot is somewhat predictable, many unlikely and surprising events ensue, and the result is a contemporary, colorful, entertaining, and heartfelt story that most readers are likely to enjoy (and maybe envy a bit). I definitely recommend Beth O'Leary's The Switch.

Nice English Girl Conquers Hollywood – The Stylist by Rosie Nixon (Amber Green No.1)

Such fun! Late-twenties Londoner Amber Green is working in a high-end boutique in the West End and gets the plum job of assisting a renowned fashion stylist to the stars as she prepares her clients for the BAFTAs and the Oscars, which includes a trip to Hollywood. 

All sorts of unexpected challenges occur, wardrobe, personal and otherwise. It's quite a bit more than Amber expected (actually she wasn't quite sure what she was expecting), but of course things have a way of working out for the best.

If you enjoy fashion, intrigue and eavesdropping on the lifestyles of the rich and famous with a British twist, this is definitely a treat. I'm looking forward to the next installment!

1 like

Off to London for a Bit of Fun: I Owe You One by Sophie Kinsella

Sometimes light is just right, especially in the hands of the skilled Sophie Kinsella. I enjoyed listening to this London-based romance/family-focused/self-discovery novel that revolves around Fixi Farr, a late-20s woman who is trying to please everyone but herself.

All the elements and clichés are here, and we know it will all work out right in the end, but Kinsella's down-to-Earth but very British dialog makes it all more fun getting there, especially hearing it read on the audio book by a British actress.

Kinsella does throw in a few twists and a unique premise which makes the book all the more appealing. Cheers!