Current reading
Jan. 2nd, 2006 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizwilliamsI'm not up for anything very intense at the moment (probably killed too many brain cells over the festering period) and so I am reading a mainstream novel at the moment. Its charming but flighty heroine marries for wealth rather than love, cares more about horse-riding, seeing her (male) friends and dancing than her marital duties, and has a child whom she feels very little for and can't mourn when it dies. The supporting cast include feminist composers ('I'll never get married. I fall in love with people about 3 times a week'), Eurotrashy aristocrats, several gay characters, and a couple of divorcees.
The most old-fashioned thing about it is that all the women smoke cigs. And yet it was written in 1893 - it's EF Benson's 'Dodo' trilogy, written some considerable time before his Lucia novels. Reading it, you realise how stuffy the late Victorians weren't.
The most old-fashioned thing about it is that all the women smoke cigs. And yet it was written in 1893 - it's EF Benson's 'Dodo' trilogy, written some considerable time before his Lucia novels. Reading it, you realise how stuffy the late Victorians weren't.
