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Death of a Unicorn
Praise for Peter Dickinson's "A literary magician controlling an appar-ently inexhaustible supply of effects."—Penelope Lively For best-selling author Lady Margaret, the past is no longer a pleasant memory. Her first lover's mysterious death and the seeming inevitability of her inheriting the family's stately home are cast in new light by secrets unwillingly revisited. The first in a series of reprints of Peter Dickinson's mysteries, this classic British mystery will win fans currently engrossed in Downton Ab-bey . Peter Dickinson has twice received the Crime Writers' As-sociation's Gold Dagger. He lives in England and is married to the novelist Robin McKinley.
187 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1984
21 people are currently reading
622 people want to read
About the author
Peter Dickinson
141 books156 followersPeter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson OBE FRSL was a prolific English author and poet, best known for children's books and detective stories.
Peter Dickinson lived in Hampshire with his second wife, author Robin McKinley. He wrote more than fifty novels for adults and young readers. He won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Award twice, and his novel The Blue Hawk won The Guardian Award in 1975.
Peter Dickinson lived in Hampshire with his second wife, author Robin McKinley. He wrote more than fifty novels for adults and young readers. He won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Award twice, and his novel The Blue Hawk won The Guardian Award in 1975.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
January 3, 2025
I need a few days to think about this one-- still not even sure if it's 3 or 4 stars.
(Reviewed 6/11/17)
PS— so a few days turned into a few years. I have zero memories of reading this book but I must have liked it!!
(Reviewed 6/11/17)
PS— so a few days turned into a few years. I have zero memories of reading this book but I must have liked it!!
July 5, 2014
I read a recommendation of this 1982 book on NPR Books. I had read many of Dickinson's books years ago and forgotten how much I love them. This one is actually not quite as good as some others. It features a young upper-class British woman who gets involved with a financier while she is working at a social whirl type magazine in the 1950s. His books are really novels of suspense rather than straight mysteries but what sets them apart is his ability to make the reader feel like he/she is inhabiting, comfortably, a totally different world. For example, other books I would recommend are (and I am borrowing other reviews here): The Green Gene: an attempt to imagine for the British what apartheid would be like if applied in the UK, and people of Celtic origin had green skins. A naive Indian mathematical genius is hired by UK racial police to do statistical analysis on likely increase of Green population. His hosts are murdered and he is kidnapped by and then becomes involved with a subversive Green movement. And if that is not odd enough, try King and Joker, told from the point of view of a fourteen year old girl, a princess in Buckingham Palace in a world where the succession has gone a little differently because Edward VII’s eldest son survived. It’s a story about having a public face and a private face, about how secrets can be poisonous. And one more: The Old English Peep Show. Inspector Pibble investigates the apparent suicide of a servant in great English country house being run as a theme park, complete with lions, by two retired WWII heroes. Believe me, each of these "worlds" and narrators are as convincing and fascinating as they sound. Mr. Dickinson is still alive, about 86, but I don't know if he is still writing. I'm tempted to send him fan mail! And if you can't find copies of his books in the library, try a used book website or I'll lend you one of mine. You won't be sorry.
November 25, 2012
When I was a kid, I loved Dickinson's 'Changes' trilogy, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story set in Britain. I've read a few of his other books, including some of the short-stories he published with his wife, Robin McKinley (one of my very favorite authors), and always loved his sense of place and his capturing of the feel of mythology.
I was aware that he also wrote adult mystery novels, but hadn't read any. I picked this up thinking it was a mystery. However, it's really not. There is a murder... but it doesn't show up as a plot element until the latter part of the book. I have to admit that I found the plot structure in general to be a little weak, which is the reason I went down to 3 stars.
However, there are things I loved about this book so much that I've already talked about it and recommended it to people. Although the book has no fantasy or mythological elements, it has that same vivid, wonderful sense of time and place that I've come to associate with Dickinson's writing. The book truly opens a window into an unglimpsed world... and lets you feel like you're just about ready to step through that window.
The main character is a society girl who ends up getting a job writing a satirical column in the society pages of a weekly magazine. Dickinson himself worked at the magazine 'Punch' for many years, and undoubtedly his portrayal of what it was like to work a a magazine in the 50's informs this novel. And that's what I really loved about this book: the view of a segment of society, the milieu of the magazine, the humor and interactions... it's wonderful.
The plot hooks on the affair the girl has with her older boss, and the fallout from it that occurs much later, in the 1980's, once she has become a successful and established businesswoman. While I liked seeing her success, the first part of the book was what really caught my interest.
I was aware that he also wrote adult mystery novels, but hadn't read any. I picked this up thinking it was a mystery. However, it's really not. There is a murder... but it doesn't show up as a plot element until the latter part of the book. I have to admit that I found the plot structure in general to be a little weak, which is the reason I went down to 3 stars.
However, there are things I loved about this book so much that I've already talked about it and recommended it to people. Although the book has no fantasy or mythological elements, it has that same vivid, wonderful sense of time and place that I've come to associate with Dickinson's writing. The book truly opens a window into an unglimpsed world... and lets you feel like you're just about ready to step through that window.
The main character is a society girl who ends up getting a job writing a satirical column in the society pages of a weekly magazine. Dickinson himself worked at the magazine 'Punch' for many years, and undoubtedly his portrayal of what it was like to work a a magazine in the 50's informs this novel. And that's what I really loved about this book: the view of a segment of society, the milieu of the magazine, the humor and interactions... it's wonderful.
The plot hooks on the affair the girl has with her older boss, and the fallout from it that occurs much later, in the 1980's, once she has become a successful and established businesswoman. While I liked seeing her success, the first part of the book was what really caught my interest.
February 6, 2017
I knew going in that this was a mystery novel, and not actually fantasy — however the title might make it sound. But it doesn’t actually seem like much of a mystery novel, either, for pretty much the whole first section. It’s kind of fun in a voyeuristic sort of way — young debutante becomes gossip writer for a magazine — but the whole thing didn’t quite work for me. The narration jumps around, I didn’t like the characters, I didn’t think the footnotes were well done (they work even less well than usual when you read something in ebook format).
Before long, I found myself skimming, and not long after that, I just didn’t care at all. I think Dickinson wrote some fantasy, and I’d be a bit more interested in trying that, considering that he was married to Robin McKinley and did some writing with her as well.
Originally posted here.
Before long, I found myself skimming, and not long after that, I just didn’t care at all. I think Dickinson wrote some fantasy, and I’d be a bit more interested in trying that, considering that he was married to Robin McKinley and did some writing with her as well.
Originally posted here.
August 26, 2023
What I liked about this has to do with everything that makes it difficult to classify. I don't think it fits particularly well under mystery. The structure is unusual but I found it worked extremely well the way it presented a perspective on two different times in a person's life in a layered way. Maybe it's a character study but it's more than that. I was quite absorbed, but I'm finding it difficult to articulate exactly why.
January 2, 2025
The first half of this book (Part 1) was a great read. A bit outside of my normal writing style, I was extremely exciting in getting to follow along with Margaret, an upper class woman who begins working for a magazine and begins a "relationship" with the owner of said magazine. This novel is a bit of everything---hints of romance and mystery. Concepts of workplace relationships and family issues also arise, which really added to the depths of characters. I feel like I know a lot about each and every character, which at times felt unnecessary. Once part 2 of the book began, skipping ahead 20-30 years later, I felt bored with the novel and unsure of where it was taking me. This part of the book felt like an add-on, and I much rather would have continued on from where part 1 left off rather than skipping ahead and "reminiscing." That's not my style of book.
All in all, I enjoyed this book. The first part left me hopeful and the second part left me wishing I could have gone back to the first part again. I really like Dickinson's writing style and would love to read more of his work---maybe a fantasy one!
All in all, I enjoyed this book. The first part left me hopeful and the second part left me wishing I could have gone back to the first part again. I really like Dickinson's writing style and would love to read more of his work---maybe a fantasy one!
January 27, 2016
A kind of miniature symphony, from Peter Dickinson, master of the alternative-style mystery of the seventies and eighties. (By which I guess I mean that subject matter and construction were often a point of departure for Dickinson; the familiar milieu of the classic English mystery provided the landscape, but he invariably has other things in mind. As author he strikes me as some eccentric Cambridge don who liked atonal music and talking to his literature students while everyone was tripping.. Tweedy to a fault, but unmistakably indie/alt. In a late 70s-80s way.)
The ornate Death Of A Unicorn coincidentally takes up that very fracture in sensibility-- the familiar postwar austerity-britain themes are deftly upended here, with a 'bookended' narrative that encapsulates two eras, late fifties and early eighties.
Semi Spoiler : Before we go much further, it should be said that the conclusion of this novel doesn't actually resolve anything, and that's going to be a dealbreaker for some readers. (How they could traverse the eras described so beautifully here and still nitpick the ending is beyond me, but there is no real 'eureka' at the finale. More of a bleak 'nothing is revealed' sort of closing.) For this reader there is such extravagant period detail, such an intriguing cast, such perfect voicing and pacing-- that there was no problem having no grand resolution.
We begin in the drab postwar era, though the upper-crusty ingénue heroine feels no privations beyond, perhaps, having to find suitable employment at a 'Tattler' style society magazine:
Until this morning I'd hardly thought about Night And Day. It was just another magazine, slightly more exciting than some of them because Mummy wouldn't have it in the house... she hated the 'Social Round' pages... she disliked all that sort of thing. I think because she thought that what they were about was extremely important but private, and it was obscene to have it all written down for dentists' wives in Wimbledon to read.
Dickinson manages a fairly unmanageable trick, that of giving the lie to the flighty, effervescent heroine's observations while never coming off as icky-male-author-does-ingénue or, even more difficult, never allowing the reader's affections to be separated from her voice. We're led thru a carefully constructed working model of English reserve in the coldwar era, elegant and fizzed up while being deliberately deflated, as we witness the spectacle.
Disclaimers aside, there is a mystery in the works, and it is just interesting enough to carry us to the second era, when great country manors are managed with droll despair by the formerly posh. More intriguing for me was the shift in the rules, the sea change in practicalities that were required to weather the cultural storm at hand.
It's probably safe to say that Dickinson was much more passionate about rendering these shifts, and the eras that produced them, than he was in hanging them on the frame of the mystery plot. I think he may have seen enough of the standard escape hatches: There was a secret twin! She was pregnant at the time! He was a deserter! She was married once before! He was secretly gay! -- Often enough he wanders pretty far afield, generally scattering the clues-solution model (squandering it, you may think) but looking instead toward the internal mysteries :
Mummy let go of Jane but not me and by swinging a few inches round managed to split us off completely from the others.
'I hope you'll introduce me to your friend, darling,' she said.
'Tom? He's in the other room.'
'The one who settles your account at Harrods.'
She smiled at me, the witch-who-will-find-you-in-the-end. Ever since I could remember she'd been able to do this ... I discovered that beneath my recent happiness and exultation--part of it, adding to its excitement--had been the certainty that this was going to happen. Of course I'd sometimes wondered what I'd do or say if she found out, but that's not what I mean. The rhythms of my life decreed that she had got to find out... In dreams of escape you glance back along your secret path and see that at the entrance you have left your pullover, caught on a blackthorn, a huge and obvious clue for the lion-faced people to find. You left it there on purpose, though you didn't know, because that is the logic of the dream...
Looking back on this, my second read of the novel, I realize there is some danger in its not-quite mystery status for some to see it as a kind of disguised historical fiction; which it is not, though the only real defense to that is to read the other Peter Dickinson novels. They are nearly all mysteries-run-astray from the pack, and a good thing, too. Having read them all in their era, I'm now revisiting the better ones, and with much pleasure.
Next up, Hindsight, Sleep And His Brother, and the list has only begun.
The ornate Death Of A Unicorn coincidentally takes up that very fracture in sensibility-- the familiar postwar austerity-britain themes are deftly upended here, with a 'bookended' narrative that encapsulates two eras, late fifties and early eighties.
Semi Spoiler : Before we go much further, it should be said that the conclusion of this novel doesn't actually resolve anything, and that's going to be a dealbreaker for some readers. (How they could traverse the eras described so beautifully here and still nitpick the ending is beyond me, but there is no real 'eureka' at the finale. More of a bleak 'nothing is revealed' sort of closing.) For this reader there is such extravagant period detail, such an intriguing cast, such perfect voicing and pacing-- that there was no problem having no grand resolution.
We begin in the drab postwar era, though the upper-crusty ingénue heroine feels no privations beyond, perhaps, having to find suitable employment at a 'Tattler' style society magazine:
Until this morning I'd hardly thought about Night And Day. It was just another magazine, slightly more exciting than some of them because Mummy wouldn't have it in the house... she hated the 'Social Round' pages... she disliked all that sort of thing. I think because she thought that what they were about was extremely important but private, and it was obscene to have it all written down for dentists' wives in Wimbledon to read.
Dickinson manages a fairly unmanageable trick, that of giving the lie to the flighty, effervescent heroine's observations while never coming off as icky-male-author-does-ingénue or, even more difficult, never allowing the reader's affections to be separated from her voice. We're led thru a carefully constructed working model of English reserve in the coldwar era, elegant and fizzed up while being deliberately deflated, as we witness the spectacle.
Disclaimers aside, there is a mystery in the works, and it is just interesting enough to carry us to the second era, when great country manors are managed with droll despair by the formerly posh. More intriguing for me was the shift in the rules, the sea change in practicalities that were required to weather the cultural storm at hand.
It's probably safe to say that Dickinson was much more passionate about rendering these shifts, and the eras that produced them, than he was in hanging them on the frame of the mystery plot. I think he may have seen enough of the standard escape hatches: There was a secret twin! She was pregnant at the time! He was a deserter! She was married once before! He was secretly gay! -- Often enough he wanders pretty far afield, generally scattering the clues-solution model (squandering it, you may think) but looking instead toward the internal mysteries :
Mummy let go of Jane but not me and by swinging a few inches round managed to split us off completely from the others.
'I hope you'll introduce me to your friend, darling,' she said.
'Tom? He's in the other room.'
'The one who settles your account at Harrods.'
She smiled at me, the witch-who-will-find-you-in-the-end. Ever since I could remember she'd been able to do this ... I discovered that beneath my recent happiness and exultation--part of it, adding to its excitement--had been the certainty that this was going to happen. Of course I'd sometimes wondered what I'd do or say if she found out, but that's not what I mean. The rhythms of my life decreed that she had got to find out... In dreams of escape you glance back along your secret path and see that at the entrance you have left your pullover, caught on a blackthorn, a huge and obvious clue for the lion-faced people to find. You left it there on purpose, though you didn't know, because that is the logic of the dream...
Looking back on this, my second read of the novel, I realize there is some danger in its not-quite mystery status for some to see it as a kind of disguised historical fiction; which it is not, though the only real defense to that is to read the other Peter Dickinson novels. They are nearly all mysteries-run-astray from the pack, and a good thing, too. Having read them all in their era, I'm now revisiting the better ones, and with much pleasure.
Next up, Hindsight, Sleep And His Brother, and the list has only begun.
January 14, 2025
I’m not really sure how I felt about this book. It was definitely written by a man - he never quite made me believe Mabs voice was hers. And I felt I knew the answer early on (not ideal for a mystery) but I somehow have the feeling this was well done. It was engaging in spite of itself.
March 11, 2022
[Warning, spoilers]
Another of Dickinson's quietly angry historical sort-of mysteries, with the mystery serving more as a way of organizing the novel than as its driving force. As in all of these books, the real villain is the dead weight of the English class system, symbolized by a vast and ancient manor house. The first part of the book, which takes place in the 1950s, seems to represent Lady Margaret's (the narrator's) brief moment of escape from her duty to the house, but in the second part, set 30 years later, it turns out that this was an illusion, and even her bid for freedom was conscripted into the work of keeping the system going. The mystery involves the origin of Lady Margaret's lover's money in the first part of the book: he doesn't just use the money to pay her rent, but also gets her a job on a magazine that he owns, thus turning her into a writer. (She becomes a success with a series satirizing London high society: the magazine scenes, based in part on Dickinson's time working for Punch, are excellent.) Eventually, we learn -- in an impressionistic dream sequence, because the process of solving the mystery is not really important -- that the money came from property confiscated by Nazis from Jews, and the murder of the lover in Rio that ends the first part of the book was by the same Nazis he had been working with (now in exile in Argentina), who thought he had double-crossed them. They thought this because Lady Margaret's mother had been blackmailing him for money for repairs and upkeep for the mansion, using the power of the financial connections her position in society gave her: when he was unable to meet the Nazis' demand for money, they murdered him. In short, money stolen from German Jews was funneled to the British aristocracy, and then the middleman -- a mixed-race Barbadian, so an outsider whom nobody important would miss -- was tossed away, with the whole thing hushed up by the police to avoid the embarrassment of having to admit that the scheme began with an officer in the British occupation army in Germany. Ironically, his death is the result of one of his virtues, his genuine affection for Lady Margaret, which prevents him from taking advantage of what resources she can offer him. And to demonstrate that Lady Margaret's mother is by no means an exception, Lady Margaret's magazine job exposes her to the seamy underside of the high-society world of debutantes and dances that she writes about: the rot and corruption are endemic. Which all sounds fairly dark, but as always, Dickinson makes it go down easy, thanks to absorbing characters -- Lady Margaret's narrative voice is pitch-perfect -- and the fully realized setting. Highly recommended, like just about everything Dickinson ever wrote.
Another of Dickinson's quietly angry historical sort-of mysteries, with the mystery serving more as a way of organizing the novel than as its driving force. As in all of these books, the real villain is the dead weight of the English class system, symbolized by a vast and ancient manor house. The first part of the book, which takes place in the 1950s, seems to represent Lady Margaret's (the narrator's) brief moment of escape from her duty to the house, but in the second part, set 30 years later, it turns out that this was an illusion, and even her bid for freedom was conscripted into the work of keeping the system going. The mystery involves the origin of Lady Margaret's lover's money in the first part of the book: he doesn't just use the money to pay her rent, but also gets her a job on a magazine that he owns, thus turning her into a writer. (She becomes a success with a series satirizing London high society: the magazine scenes, based in part on Dickinson's time working for Punch, are excellent.) Eventually, we learn -- in an impressionistic dream sequence, because the process of solving the mystery is not really important -- that the money came from property confiscated by Nazis from Jews, and the murder of the lover in Rio that ends the first part of the book was by the same Nazis he had been working with (now in exile in Argentina), who thought he had double-crossed them. They thought this because Lady Margaret's mother had been blackmailing him for money for repairs and upkeep for the mansion, using the power of the financial connections her position in society gave her: when he was unable to meet the Nazis' demand for money, they murdered him. In short, money stolen from German Jews was funneled to the British aristocracy, and then the middleman -- a mixed-race Barbadian, so an outsider whom nobody important would miss -- was tossed away, with the whole thing hushed up by the police to avoid the embarrassment of having to admit that the scheme began with an officer in the British occupation army in Germany. Ironically, his death is the result of one of his virtues, his genuine affection for Lady Margaret, which prevents him from taking advantage of what resources she can offer him. And to demonstrate that Lady Margaret's mother is by no means an exception, Lady Margaret's magazine job exposes her to the seamy underside of the high-society world of debutantes and dances that she writes about: the rot and corruption are endemic. Which all sounds fairly dark, but as always, Dickinson makes it go down easy, thanks to absorbing characters -- Lady Margaret's narrative voice is pitch-perfect -- and the fully realized setting. Highly recommended, like just about everything Dickinson ever wrote.
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November 8, 2015
Not this one; too slow and irritating. Try another.
September 6, 2025
I have no idea what the fuck this book was even about. Clearly I can't read because I swore the Googlenater said that the movie Death of a Unicorn was based on a book.... this book.....
WRONGO... I should of known based on the low and few ratings of this book on goodreads. sigh.
Besides the same title and ONE singular mention of said "unicorn", they have nothing in common. I was halfway through the book when I decided to do a second google search to find out that I was indeed wrong... very wrong. But I'm no quitter so I finished this book. This is nothing against Dickinson, I'm sure his other books are lovely... but this one was not. Very slow and just overall confusing. My personal confusion of when I'd see the bloody unicorn also could have played into my dislike for the book. Oh well. The book is finished and I can now watch the movie. The movie that is most definitely based on this weird ass book.
WRONGO... I should of known based on the low and few ratings of this book on goodreads. sigh.
Besides the same title and ONE singular mention of said "unicorn", they have nothing in common. I was halfway through the book when I decided to do a second google search to find out that I was indeed wrong... very wrong. But I'm no quitter so I finished this book. This is nothing against Dickinson, I'm sure his other books are lovely... but this one was not. Very slow and just overall confusing. My personal confusion of when I'd see the bloody unicorn also could have played into my dislike for the book. Oh well. The book is finished and I can now watch the movie. The movie that is most definitely based on this weird ass book.
May 11, 2022
This is a book I don't quite know how to discuss. I much enjoyed parts of it. The writing was brilliant and I adored the setting. I think I mainly liked this book because I got a glimpse into mid-20th century high society England - a period I know little (ok - nothing) about. Being able to peek into that world was a delight. Apart from that though...the story and characters themselves were rather grim. I suppose I shouldn't fault the book too much for that, but when I got to the end of it, I could not say I enjoyed this book. It was a good one, but dark. I did enjoy getting to the end and slowly realizing the resolution to the key mystery on this book - most satisfying and sign-posted just enough that I could discover the truth of it before we were explicitly told. Again though, this book made me sad in many ways and though I can't deny its quality, it is not a book I'd read again.
June 19, 2020
My feelings on this book went up and down on this one. In the first section, I did enjoy the look into the upper-class mind of Lady Margaret. However, as soon as Mr. B came into the picture, the warning bells rang for me and I couldn't be on her side anymore. Then when the mystery came into the story, my interest perked up. Yet, the second section is a bore. It was like a crawl to the so-called payoff. It needed a scene with Jane at the end.
March 15, 2024
Initially engrossing, but the story ended up disappointing me. Ultimately, I didn't like or sympathize with the main characters, so I didn't see the point of it all or care much about the awkward plot revelations of the second half. But I'm giving it three stars for the way Dickinson (whose writing I usually admire) effectively creates an interesting group of characters at a struggling London magazine, and richly evokes the atmosphere of postwar England's shifting social strata.
October 10, 2025
This wasn't terrible but it certainly wasn't what I was hoping for in my second Peter Dickinson book, after starting so strong with The Blue Hawk, a rare 5 star read for me. This book was, I guess, a mystery of sorts, but not one that I found engaging. Mabs was not a character I really got behind in either section of the book.
October 19, 2018
Not quite a mystery, nor did it fulfill the expectations I'd developed for the author's style. Still nicely written and an interesting glimpse of a particular setting. I'm willing to try another, I just don't think I picked the right book to start with.
March 29, 2021
It is many years since I have read a Peter Dickinson mystery so I was intrigued on finding this. It goes really well until the denoument which is not really a working out - rather a breathless summing up.
September 28, 2022
I bought this years ago assuming it was a mystery, which is it not in the classic genre sense. There is a mystery in that Lady Margaret didn’t understand events in her youth that she parses out thirty years later.
December 27, 2020
This is an odd and fascinating book; not a traditional mystery, very well written, and with a plot and characters that are quite unique and unexpected.
May 22, 2021
Not exactly a mystery, but an engrossing character study and story of intrigue.
Read
May 7, 2022A version of the Yellow Room Conspiracy
June 23, 2022
What a voice. Lovely piece of character work.
NB. Contains racist language and ideas that are in keeping with the narrator’s character and time.
NB. Contains racist language and ideas that are in keeping with the narrator’s character and time.
August 3, 2024
Esperaba mucho más, y algo muy diferente. Una joya si evaluamos su narrativa, su historia me queda a deber.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 29, 2025
Follows Lady Margaret Millet who stands to inherit her family’s estate, but becomes mistress to her employer. Told from two perspectives from her 30 years apart. A well written snore-fest.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 27, 2025
A treasure
November 5, 2020
Безумно похоже на "Город женщин" (тема, время действия, герои, композиция).
August 14, 2014
Where in the world did I get the idea to order this out-of-print book from Better World Books? I must have read a recommendation somewhere--but not from my usual sources.
It was a quirky read but very enjoyable. Lady Margaret at age 21 and at age 51 was memorable; her lover Mr. B, her sister Jane, her domineering mother, and later her daughter and son are less so. Their motivations were not always that clear to me.
An incident near the end of the book resonated with me. Lady Margaret visits an aged Mrs. Clarke, a gossip columnist she worked with 30 years earlier. She is encouraged to meet someone who has the disabilities of aging but is coping unlike her own ogre of a mother who now suffers from a stroke and dementia. Even Mrs. Clarke's confidence is shaken when her memory of something 30 years ago is questioned. She turns out to be right and Lady Margaret covers for her own unawareness of the true story.
This is just one little scene of many but it was typical of the pictures created in my mind while reading.
It was a quirky read but very enjoyable. Lady Margaret at age 21 and at age 51 was memorable; her lover Mr. B, her sister Jane, her domineering mother, and later her daughter and son are less so. Their motivations were not always that clear to me.
An incident near the end of the book resonated with me. Lady Margaret visits an aged Mrs. Clarke, a gossip columnist she worked with 30 years earlier. She is encouraged to meet someone who has the disabilities of aging but is coping unlike her own ogre of a mother who now suffers from a stroke and dementia. Even Mrs. Clarke's confidence is shaken when her memory of something 30 years ago is questioned. She turns out to be right and Lady Margaret covers for her own unawareness of the true story.
This is just one little scene of many but it was typical of the pictures created in my mind while reading.
February 28, 2013
Plot: 2 stars
Characters: 2 1/2 stars
Style: 3 stars
Pace: 2 1/2 stars
I knew the streak of amazing books had to end.
I'd picked a bunch of random paperbacks off my TBR shelf to take to work with me, and I figured I'd read this one first. There were bits I started to like, but it's far more a character study in shallow 1950s bubblebrains than anything resembling a coherent narrative. The structure on this one was strange as well, leaping forward abruptly, and getting lost in side paths. I probably would give it 2 stars, but for the fact that there was something almost voyeuristic about it all, and that curiosity kept me reading.
Characters: 2 1/2 stars
Style: 3 stars
Pace: 2 1/2 stars
I knew the streak of amazing books had to end.
I'd picked a bunch of random paperbacks off my TBR shelf to take to work with me, and I figured I'd read this one first. There were bits I started to like, but it's far more a character study in shallow 1950s bubblebrains than anything resembling a coherent narrative. The structure on this one was strange as well, leaping forward abruptly, and getting lost in side paths. I probably would give it 2 stars, but for the fact that there was something almost voyeuristic about it all, and that curiosity kept me reading.
October 16, 2014
I don't know why this was on my "to-read" list. I'm guessing a list of recommended mysteries? I liked the time period and the characters...it had potential. But there wasn't enough development. A 20 year old woman becomes the mistress of her boss and then he dies. She doesn't look into his death. She moves on with her life. Which seems weird to me, because she says she loved him. Then 40 some-odd years later she starts wondering about things. Nothing exciting is revealed. Not worth the time invested to read it.
July 5, 2014
3-1/2 stars, really. This was a very interesting read. I orderd the book from Bookbub, intrigued by the title. Set in England in the 1950s and later in teh 1980s, it chronicles the life of a twin born into a titled family, weathly because of the estate and land, poor becuase the estate and land required so much maintenance. There is a mystery intwined in the story that slowly unfolds. The book evoked quite a lot of different emotions ranging from interest to disgust (at the actions of one of the characters), and to intrigue. It is not a long book -- only 175 pages and well worth the read.
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