A Brief History of Montmaray
by Michelle Cooper
This is a tough nut to crack. It's a YA novel about a family who are the owners, rulers, and last remaining inhabitants of the Island Kingdom of Montmaray, which appears to be off the coast somewhere between Spain, France and England. Told as a journal of the second-oldest girl Sophie, a young girl coming of age in the time of the Spanish civil war, right before World War II.
Fascinating, huh? But half-way through I decided it was a poor imitation of I Capture The Castle and only worth finishing because I had it on the IPod and needed something to listen to in the car.
Well, it got good. So good, in fact, I want to read the sequel. Sophie is a gem of a girl--when in a creepy tunnel she imagines that mice or bats are making the rustly sound--rats would be unthinkable! Yeah, but a few minutes later, rats are the least of her worries! Her writing is so prodigious that I'm reminded of a comment made about Samuel Richardson's Pamela--how'd the heck did they find time to do anything other than write letters all day and night?
No comments:
Post a Comment