Natalia Costenco Costenco itibaren Camano Island, WA 98282, USA
Incomparable. I came to this book after reading this quotation from Geoff Rymann's Was: "By now anyone would have a right to wonder what actually happened eighty years ago: the men burning houses barns and horses so that for ten years and more the countryside was an inferno of revenge, broken by a fifth season of arson. The tramps who packed guns and overran whole towns. The old men who went mad with jealousy. The old women who jumped down wells " Most of the reviewers on this site have quoted striking excerpts from the Badger State Banner. But the excerpts in this book are almost without exception as amazing as they are foreign to our modern ears. This book deserves your attention
I had heard many good things about this novel, and since I love historical novels and mysteries I was excited about this one. Alas, I was disappointed. The storyline felt disjointed, and the novel takes us in three parts: the early 1920's when most of the mystery is supposed to happen, then back to the beginning of Maisie's life and how she got where she was, and finally back to the 1920's. I actually enjoyed the second aspect of the novel the most, learning about Maisie's past and her interactions in the household where she was first a maid and then became a pupil of a doctor friend of her employers. But when I was first thrown back to that part of her life, it felt like I was being removed from the mystery and I had to adjust my brain to it. Oddly, then, when the book took me back to the mystery, I didn't enjoy it so much. I read this book a while ago now and I can't recall everything too well, but the mystery seemed rather simple and disappointing. I have the second book in the series and liked the first well enough to see if the next one is an improvement; but I did not like this one well enough to keep or to recommend.