“What constitutes a problem in not the thing, or the environment where we find the thing, but the conjunction of the two; something unexpected in a usual place (our favorite aunt in out favourite poker parlour) or something usual in an unexpected place (our favourite poker parlour in our favorite aunt). I know my […]

I absolutely loved this. There is quite a lot of controversy linked with this story, and what was really happening. Was their really evil? Was the Governess mad?
The end is rather inconclusive and leaves the reader to decide for themselves.
I thought it was very compelling and well written. James did a […]

“Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificient parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces–though I cannot tell why this was […]

“It’s a secondhand world we’re born into. What is novel to us is only so because we’re newborn, and what we cannot see, that has come before- what our parents have seen and been and done- are the hand-me-downs we begin to wear as swaddling clothes, even as we ourselves are naked. The […]

This writer has the most somber, yet beautiful voice. Her stories, though the characters can at times be a bit thin, are incredibly emotional.
This book switched back and forth between a modern day photographer, and the story of the island she was photographing, and the memoir written of the only surviving member of […]