Saturday, December 3, 2011

Giants Bread... a quick review

I still feel I suck at a book review, I'm like that guy who said he didn't know anything about art, he just knew what he liked.  So with that in mind I thought I'd resort to the old Show me 5 way.

1. The Book I Read: was Giant's Bread, by Mary Westmacott, better known as Agatha Christie.

2. Two words to describe it: Historical Fiction

3. Characters you met and places they were.

The main character of this novel is Vernon, an only child.  His parents were not a happy couple, quite weird.  Vernon's father died in the Boer War leaving his mother Myra to raise him.  Myra is a drama queen.

Joe, Josephine was Vernon's cousin, Vernon's father's sisters daughter.  She comes to live with Vernon after the divorce and subsequent death of her mother.  A diamond in the rough.  Up until Joe's arrival Vernon was a very lonely child.

Sebastian Levine, moved next door to Vernon's family estate. (The estate figures prominently in  the story line.)

Nell a girl from the town where Vernon lives.  She comes to tea with her mother and imposes herself on Joe, Vernon and Sebastian.

Jane a Opera singer/actress with whom Vernon becomes involved.

The story line takes place in England sometime before the WWI.  We meet Vernon and his dysfunctional parents when he is very young.  It baffled me to think children were really raised in this manner, but nonetheless nanny's were responsible for the children and parents seemed to be very distant.  After Vernon's father goes off to war and dies, life changes considerably.  I thought Vernon was somewhat a clueless young man.  Didn't really like him, and was not so sure why everyone dotted on him. Did they see the genius in him?  Anyway, as life would have it, he, after many years of being away from Nell suddenly sees her again and falls head over heels in love, only to be not good enough.  Well a series of unfortunate events occur and in the end he see his true love in another...

What |I loved:  Well everything.  I love this authors work and quite honestly if she had written the phone book I think I'd find it interesting.
What I didn't like:  as this is an older publication, it was combined with 5 other novels and the book weighed more than Musashi, thought I'd have a concussion if I fell asleep while reading it. I ended up having to wear a wrist brace some days.

Five stars or ?  You know I'm going to have to say 5 stars, nothing else would do for Ms. Christie.

I read this book to complete my What's in a Name Challenge and to get my fix in on The Agatha Christie Challenge.  I never seem to meet the deadline for that one but...

3 comments:

Shonna said...

Christie's books are always good. I have two nieces working their way through them right now.

bermudaonion said...

What we really want to know is if you liked the book, so this is perfect!

Jenners said...

If the Show Me 5 format works for you, continue to use it! It does make it easier to write a review when you have a format and a guide for what to say!

I would like to reiterate that Musashi was also the heaviest and most painful book I've ever read as well.

Happy Birthday

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