Coralie

by Charlotte M. Brame

"Eighty pounds a year!" My reader can imagine that this was no great fortune. I had little or nothing to spend in kid gloves or cigars; indeed, to speak plain, prosaic English, I went without a good dinner far oftener than I had one. Yet, withal, I was passing rich on eighty pounds a year. My father, Captain Trevelyan, a brave and deserving officer, died when I was a child. My mother, a meek, fragile invalid, never recovered his loss, but died some years after him, leaving me alone in the world with my sister Clare.

68 pages, Paperback

Published June 15, 2015

About the author

Charlotte Mary Brame (middle name sometimes given as Monica, last name sometimes spelled Braeme) was an English author of romantic novels. She also wrote under the pseudonym Bertha M. Clay.

Reviews

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was quite a short book and read more like a short story than a novel. I chose this author as she is from our local area and was popular in the late 19th century and I often wondered what her books were like. I also wondered if there was any indication of what it was like in the 1800s.

Quite an old fashioned tale and I felt it started off a bit like Dickens with poor orphans inheriting from a rich uncle.

The story seemed a bit slow to get going. There was a small amount of intrigue in the middle of it.
Edgar the main character seemed to whitter on a lot and although the story was interesting enough I felt the characters lacked depth. Coralie the title character just seemed strange.

The story starts off in a lot of detail but feels very rushed towards the end where it skips years suddenly.

[Phil Syphe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tale of loss and gain in and love and in fortune.

This is the second book I've read by Ms Brame and once again I'm impressed by her storytelling talents. This isn't edge-of-the-seat reading but it is engaging throughout. This author knew how to create suspense.

Edgar - the narrator of the tale - and his sister, Clare, come into a fortune and move in to the Elizabethan Crown Anstey, famed for once being occupied by a former queen of England.

With the new abode comes Coralie; an exquisite beauty of Anglo-French-Spanish decent. Despite her charm and beauty, Edgar and Clare find it hard to like this graceful lady yet can't figure out why. From here the reader can sense there's more to the character's name than meets the eye: Cor-A-LIE. The author is clever enough to keep us guessing.

This is available for free download from Project Gutenberg. It's not very long and is worth a read.