Nose in a Novel

    When I read these books when I was a teenager, I remember finding Frances' Story slow moving and a bit boring after Sarah's Story , but that is not the case at all on my re-read as an adult. I enjoyed this book as much (if not a bit more than) the first book. We already know the broad strokes about what happened to the Purcells (and the Mackenzies) from 1910-1920, but we see the years again through Frances' eyes and some of the events and details Sarah could not have known are sketched out. I enjoyed seeing Frances as she saw herself, not just as the stern (occasionally unfeeling) older sister that Sarah saw her as. I understood Frances as an adult in a way I didn't when I was young. I found her refusal to marry perfectly valid, and in fact got a little annoyed that Gabriel kept asking, as it felt like he was infantilizing her in his refusal to accept that she knew her own mind. I also liked that she allowed herself to grow and change her mind towards the end of th...

  I have not re-read The Sisters of the Quantock Hills in almost twenty years (!) because I was held back by two fears: What if I couldn't handle how sad the stories are in places? What if my memories are colored by nostalgia and the writing not as good as I remember? This re-read put both fears to rest. The sadness is realistic but not without hope. And the writing is amazing. I will always feel that this series is an underappreciated gem. This series was one of my favorites when I was 16. I loved the physical books- the gorgeous cover art, the font, the thick pages, even the smell of the paperbacks. I loved the story. The same period of time, told four times over, from four different perspectives, the readers gaining a deeper understanding of the "whole story" with each new point of view. These stories are beautifully written - vivid descriptions and strong emotion but all done in a very tight, almost sparse writing that makes the feelings hit that much harder because ...