Dodo

Dodo Trilogy #1

by E.F. Benson, Helja Vallikivi (Translator)

Romaani keskmes on kauni ja mitmekülgsselt andeka noore seltskonnadaami õnneotsingud. Dodo ülekeevalt särtsakas temperament ja isepäisus ajendavad teda mõnigi kord mõtlematutele tegudele, kuid eks ole nii, et kes palju armastab, sellele antakse paljugi andeks!

223 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1893

About the author

Edward Frederic "E. F." Benson was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer.

E. F. Benson was the younger brother of A.C. Benson, who wrote the words to "Land of Hope and Glory", Robert Hugh Benson, author of several novels and Roman Catholic apologetic works, and Margaret Benson, an author and amateur Egyptologist.

Benson died during 1940 of throat cancer at the University College Hospital, London. He is buried in the cemetery at Rye, East Sussex.

Last paragraph from Wikipedia

Reviews

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

A woman's a bore when she is serious. Isn't it so? Because I talk nonsense you think I am entirely untrustworthy about things that matter. -Dodo

I feel like this summation of herself is an apt way to begin the book. Dodo is a character along the veins of Lizzie Eustace and Becky Sharp to me. She straightforwardly explains her refusal of a marriage proposal from her close friend, Jack Broxton, in this way. She reminds Jack neither of them would play second fiddle to each other and she needs money. Lots of it. Something he doesn't have nor does he have the title his cousin, Lord Chesterford, has. And so the book sets off, telling story of Jack and Dodo with an assorted cast of characters.

It was entertaining. Dodo is inclined to a dizzying flight of ideas when she's "on" so to speak and charms her friends and husband. Jack warns her that will fade and she won't be able to continue to fool Chesterford of her devotion. These prophetic words haunt Dodo through out the book and when she eventually comes to the realization of their truth it was devastating to her. But in true Dodo fashion, that doesn't last long and she's back in action.

I will say though this was enjoyable. There are several melodramatic scenes that approach eye rolling level. And Benson's character Prince Waldenbech is a brute. A super creepy brute. And I was beginning to suspect some rape innuendos or borderline on it. Yet it isn't really addressed and skirted around in conversations. The book ended rather uncomfortably for me. Perhaps the next will provide more insight.

[April · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dodo is essentially equal parts Scarlett O'Hara and Gatsby's Daisy. Unfortunately, she has all of their annoying qualities with none of their humor and charisma. I'm glad E.F. Benson moved on from Dodo to create two of my favorite female protagonists - Mapp and Lucia.

[Ashley Lambert-Maberly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Note enjoying it at all, despite being one of the world's biggest fans of the Lucia series (I've even written a musical about it).

Yes, I wasn't expecting another out-and-out comedy, I'm happy merely to read really great writing about interesting people doing interesting things, but instead it's so frickin' stagey: characters come on, have conversations, leave, change the set, meet a new character, another conversation, change the set ... and none of the people are interesting, the conversations are dull, the little narration there is has decided to principly belabor what Dodo's character is in a very tell-not-show way, and I'm over it, and moving on. Sorry Mr. Benson, I still love you, but I suspect you had to be there to appreciate Dodo, she has not aged well.

(Note: I'm a writer, so I suffer when I offer fewer than five stars. But these aren't ratings of quality, they're a subjective account of how much I liked the book: 5* = an unalloyed pleasure from start to finish, 4* = really enjoyed it, 3* = readable but not thrilling, 2* = disappointing, and 1* = hated it.)

[Tamzin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow y’all really love a morally grey character until they’re a woman?

I usually let other people have their own opinions of books and get on with my day but there is something that makes me angry about the vibe of the reviews on this book.

Dodo is an interesting and well crafted story with a brilliant cast of characters. It really tests your limits of how much you are willing to root for someone.

How much should someone get away with just because they are a loved figure? Are those criticising her only those who don’t personally like her? And up to what point can we say that she was right in what she did?

Also loved the discussions on boredom, especially on the background of the social expectations of marriage at the time, gender roles etc.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about Dodo, her life and the people in it. She is quite an interesting character up to a point. She is aware that she has no emotional intelligence and lives her life in an unapologetically selfish and self-centred way, unlike her husband who is very empathetic and compassionate. It is quite a bleak book and the storyline about their baby is very hard to read about. The book is well written but has little of the charm of Mapp and Lucia and I won't be reading the other 2 in the trilogy.

[Mark Rabideau · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this while listening through much of the novels on LibriVox. The narrator of the novels (Anna Simon) was magnificent, as always. The novels themselves were awful. They are centered on a self absorbed, selfish, amoral woman who reminds me of a certain president. I recommend skipping this series. If you want to deal with that sort of person, your time might be as well spent watching today's character act out on the tv and internet.

[Bob Dyson · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is hard to believe that Dodo was written by the author of those wonderful Lucia books; hard to believe, too, that it was so well received when it came out. Dodo is (to cut a long story short) about the emotionally self-indulgent life of a shallow, avaricious woman who 'married a man who adored her, for whom she did not care two pins' heads.' She is supposed to be a 'type' common in late Victorian England, though her brutal self-absorption and constant desire to be amused has a decidedly contemporary flavour. I found Dodo tedious, not at all well written, and depressingly amoral. The conversation is stilted and unnatural, the prose is stodgy and disfigured by passages of sentimentality and melodrama, and the central character - whom we are supposed to think witty and vivacious - is selfish, demanding and manipulative. As much as anything, this is a book that has dated badly, and I suppose one ought to make allowances for that; the attitudes and conventions of the naughty nineties have not weathered well. But I couldn't help thinking of Galsworthy on a very off day, with dashes of Ouida. If you are a fan of E.F. Benson's later social comedies, only disappointment awaits you here.

[Daria · Rating 1 out of 5]

Better read Thackeray's Vanity Fair or Wharton's House of Mirth. Some on Librivox mistakenly tagged it as "humorous fiction". I couldn't find anything humorous about it, and the fiction was bad.

[Ace McGee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dodo is charming in such a self destructive way. I became quite involved with the characters in this tale and, anxious for an outcome, sprinted through the final chapters.

“She had often felt rather resentful against Dodo, who alternately liked and disliked people whom Mrs. Vane would have given her right hand to be in a position to like, and both hands to be in a position to dislike.”

[Chris Passingham · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sorry but I just was unable to read yet another book in which the characters all made me feel physically sick

[Katrin · Rating 2 out of 5]

As much as I loved Lucia and Mapp, this was not my book at all. I did not know wether to be annoyed or bored.