Thomas Mann: I associate Mann so much with Joseph and His Brothers, I needed a reminder that he was actually part of the intellectual literary life of the early 1900s. I read the opening of Magic Mountain.
Kate Manning: The Gilded Mountain is historical fiction set in the early 1900s in a mining town in Colorado. The opening reminded me of Lost Horizon, only the perspective is totally different. The guide remarks blithely that of course it is possible to bring in pianos and stoves and mahogany wood for the rich man who runs the mine. In Lost Horizon, the risks are deemed acceptable because the monks can pay. In The Gilded Mountain, the risks are deemed the product of greed–the writer intends to tackle the rising labor movements of the era.
Olivia Manning: Friends and Heroes–husband and wife bond or don’t bond during World War II. A lot of people were writing a lot of books like this in the mid-1900s. That is, marriage as a topic wasn’t relegated to the romance section. Marriage itself was being tackled as a twentieth century “problem” alongside ramifications of the Industrial Revolution.
Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall. Even before I read reviews (which I rarely do), I was uncomfortable with the book. A red flag for me is when a character is excused from the get-go because that character was abused in the past (there was a time when I was growing up when recovered memories of abuse were treated as the ultimate excuse/explanation).
I had the same reaction to a book about Deborah Sampson. Her desire to go to war dressed as a man is explained in the novel by her being raped. The idea that she might have dressed as a man and gone to war because she wanted to is bypassed for a “psychological” explanation. And I found it far less interesting.
A non-excused Cromwell to me would have been far more inviting.
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