Mary's Library

Monday, November 20, 2006

Period Piece


My not-trollope group is reading an interesting book this month. It's called Period Piece and was written in 1952 by the artist Gwen Raverat, who was a granddaughter of Charles Darwin and who circled in the outer orbit of Bloomsbury.

The book has a quiet charm and is a great change from Emile Zola. It's not a memoir or a diary though it is autobiographical. Raverat drifts along drawing word pictures of the world of Cambridge in her youth. She was born in 1885 and died in 1957.

The book is illustrated with Raverat's line drawings, which are cheerful and droll, as is the English world in the 1990s that she describes. She enjoys poking fun at her mother, who was an American, with all the idiosyncracies that implies. (Think Daisy Miller.)

My opinion of the book hasn't jelled yet. I'll let you know what I think as I read along.

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