Monthly Archives: July 2011

More on Frans Hals

Posted on July 29, 2011 by carolwallace

Big review today in the New York Times of a Frans Hals show at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. A great accompaniment to the exhibit would be Michael Kernan‘s The Lost Diaries of Frans Hals,  a wonderful, vivid novel that puts you in 17th-century Holland. Kernan writes about … Continue reading →

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Dodie Smith, “I Capture the Castle”

Posted on July 26, 2011 by carolwallace

I Capture the Castle is a Sacred Text for me, a book I read over and over again as a teenager and still revisit every few years. Each time, I am enchanted despite knowing the plot and characters intimately, and … Continue reading →

Posted in anglophilia | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

Patrick Leigh Fermor, “A Time to Keep Silence”

Posted on July 23, 2011 by carolwallace

My passion for nun literature is not quite matched by my passion for monk literature — which, by the way, is not as rich a field. Matthew Lewis’s 1796 The Monk, an early Gothic, springs to mind but I can’t … Continue reading →

Posted in anglophilia, memoir | Tagged | 7 Comments

R.I.P. Lucian Freud

Posted on July 22, 2011 by carolwallace

Yesterday’s announcement of Lucian Freud’s death saddened me, since Man with a Blue Scarf portrayed him so vividly. Martin Gayford made me feel as if I had known him.

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April Smith, “White Shotgun”

Posted on July 21, 2011 by carolwallace

It’s a great title, isn’t it? “White shotgun” is apparently the term used in Italy when someone vanishes and no trace remains, no body, no documents…. nothing. As we are told in the first chapter, this is the result when … Continue reading →

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Muriel Spark, “A Far Cry from Kensington”

Posted on July 20, 2011 by carolwallace

“So great was the noise during the day that I used to lie awake at night listening to the silence. Eventually, I fell asleep contented, filled with soundlessness, but while I was awake I enjoyed the experience of darkness, thought, … Continue reading →

Posted in anglophilia, classic | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Elly Griffths, “The Crossing Places”

Posted on July 17, 2011 by carolwallace

Am I old? No, don’t answer that. Old-fashioned, then? Is that why present-tense narration rubs me the wrong way? I think I understand the rationale: as a writer, you might want to get closer, always closer to the story you … Continue reading →

Posted in anglophilia, mystery | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Patrick Leigh Fermor, “Between the Woods and the Water”

Posted on July 14, 2011 by carolwallace

Between the Woods and the Water takes up exactly where Patrick Leigh Fermor left off at the end of A Time of Gifts; the first sentence reads “Perhaps I had made too long a halt on the bridge.”  (A reminder that … Continue reading →

Posted in classic, memoir, nonfiction | Tagged | 5 Comments

Asti Hustvedt, “Medical Muses”

Posted on July 11, 2011 by carolwallace

One of the most fascinating areas of research for Leaving Van Gogh was the treatment of  mental illness in 19th-century France. Since the novel is set in 1890, it’s natural that I came across the titanic figure of that era, Dr. … Continue reading →

Posted in nonfiction, scholarly | Tagged | 1 Comment

Julia Spencer-Fleming, “One Was a Soldier”

Posted on July 10, 2011 by carolwallace

If there’s a writer who can credibly manage the issue-based murder mystery, that writer is Julia Spencer-Fleming — but it’s a project fraught with difficulty. We read murder mysteries to escape. That doesn’t mean they all have to be set … Continue reading →

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