Review: Agnes Grey (1847) by Anne Brontë

Agnes is the daughter of a clergyman and a woman who sacrificed wealth and social standing to marry for love. When the family's fortunes decline, Agnes decides to contribute financially by becoming a governess. Partly motivated by necessity and partly by a desire for independence, she enters a world that is in some ways familiar to her, and in others is hostile.

On the surface, Agnes Grey is a coming-of-age story and a romance, but it is also a novel deeply concerned with class, family, morality and the way people treat one another. Anne Brontë pays close attention to everyday cruelties: the treatment of servants, the casual disregard shown to those considered socially inferior, even the cruel treatment of animals. Through Agnes's observations, these small acts become a measure of character.

What fascinated me most was the position Agnes occupies as a governess. She is caught between worlds. She is expected to act as a parent without possessing any parental authority. She is responsible for educating children while being constrained in what she can teach and how she can teach it. She is employed because she is a lady with education and accomplishments, yet she is often treated little better than a servant. Agnes herself reflects on these challenges that she faces in her day-to-day existence. 

For a novel published in 1847, this felt remarkably modern. Agnes's frustrations will be familiar to many women today: being given responsibility without power, being expected to manage the emotional labour of others while having little say in important decisions, and constantly navigating contradictory expectations. She is expected to be firm but agreeable, accomplished but humble, indispensable but invisible. More than once I found myself thinking that while the setting may be Victorian, the experience is not entirely confined to the nineteenth century.

The young women Agnes teaches, Rosalie and Matilda Murray, are equally interesting. Neither is particularly likeable. They are selfish, class-conscious and at times cruel. Yet Anne Brontë allows us to see them as products of their society as much as perpetrators of it. Their futures depend almost entirely on marriage, and they are raised with few meaningful expectations beyond attracting a suitable husband and displaying the right accomplishments. Beneath their vanity and thoughtlessness is a kind of emptiness, created by a society that gives them little purpose and even less freedom.

Unlike Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey contains no grand gothic drama or significant complexity. Instead, its strength lies in its honesty. It is a straightforward depiction of the daily realities faced by a Victorian governess and of a young woman trying to remain true to herself in a world that constantly asks her to compromise.

I found it utterly absorbing. Its themes felt surprisingly relevant and Agnes is a heroine whose quiet resilience stayed with me long after I finished the final page. It would not surprise me at all if Agnes Grey ends up being one of my favourite books of the year. 

5 / 5 I couldn't put it down. This is a new favourite and books like these are why I love reading. 

Review: All Her Fault (2022) by Andrea Mara

If I had to sum up All Her Fault in a single word, it would be: laborious.

I don't mind a twisty thriller or being led down the wrong path. But this one never really worked for me.

The novel opens with an interesting premise. Marissa arrives at a house to collect her young son, Milo, from a playdate, only to discover that the address she has been given belongs to a complete stranger. There is no playdate, and Milo has been kidnapped. It's the sort of opening that should get you excited but instead, I found myself struggling to engage.

The story is told from two perspectives: Marissa, the mother of the missing child, and Jenny, another school parent whose son was unknowingly used to lure Milo away. I suspect Andrea Mara intended these dual perspectives to build tension and perhaps explore some of the complexities of modern parenting and family life. Sadly, neither of those things really landed for me.

The characters felt disappointingly two-dimensional. We have the cliquey, unpleasant school mums and the career mother weighed down by guilt about balancing work and family. They all felt like familiar television archetypes rather than fully realised people. In fact, much of the novel felt as though it had been written with a television adaptation in mind rather than as a novel in its own right.

Despite being packed with twists and red herrings, the story somehow managed to feel both obvious and overly dramatic at the same time. By the final few reveals, I felt as though I was being asked to perform increasingly elaborate mental gymnastics just to make everything fit together. I appreciate that thrillers often require a degree of suspended disbelief. But this one asked for far too much of it from me.

All Her Fault is interested in blame: who was responsible for Milo's kidnapping, and how responsibility can be shared and imposed upon others. Had the novel leaned more into those themes and been written as more of a literary exploration of guilt and responsibility, I suspect it might have worked better for me. As a thriller, though, it all felt too surface level to have much emotional impact.

It's probably clear by now that I didn't particularly enjoy this one. The premise is undeniably compelling, but the execution simply didn't deliver for me, and unfortunately it's not a novel I would recommend.

1/5: Hard  slog and not for me. 

Revisting Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Bronte

Revisting Wuthering Heights

Like many people, I revisited Wuthering Heights ahead of the release of Emerald Fennell's adaptation earlier this year. Having already reviewed the novel back in 2010, I thought I'd do something a little different this time and instead share some reflections on the film and on returning to Emily Brontë's story after all these years. 

This time around, I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Joanne Froggatt of Downton Abbey fame, and it genuinely transformed the experience for me. 

I have never quite understood people's passion for Wuthering Heights. I loved it, and considered it a brilliant read, but it will never head to my favourite's list. My original reading left me feeling that it was dark, depressing and, at times, hard work. I particularly struggled with Emily Brontë's phonetic rendering of dialect, often finding myself concentrating more on deciphering what was being said than on the story itself. 

Listening to Froggatt's narration removed that barrier entirely. Having a talented actor interpret those voices meant I could simply immerse myself in the story and its characters. So, if you've always found the language of Wuthering Heights a little impenetrable, I highly recommend giving the audiobook a try. 

Is it really a romance?

Despite Wuthering Heights often being spoken about as one of literature's great romances, I have never experienced it that way. To me, it is a story about intergenerational trauma, abuse, obsession and the damage that people inflict upon one another. 

Emerald Fennell, however, approaches the material from a very different angle. 

Her adaptation leans heavily into the romantic and sexual relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff. The film introduces scenes of physical intimacy that are either absent from or only implied in the novel and places much greater emphasis on longing, desire and romantic connection than I ever found in Brontë's text. 

I am not a purist when it comes to adaptations, and I have no objection to a filmmaker reimagining a classic. In fact, I think the scale of Fennell's changes works in the film's favour. The alterations are so significant that it becomes easier to approach this as a new interpretation altogether, rather than constantly measuring it against the original page by page. Smaller changes might have invited endless comparisons, but these changes create something fundamentally different. 

The changes that didn't work me

If I had to take issue with the adaptation, it would be on two points. 

Firstly, I struggled with the reimagining of Heathcliff's relationship with Isabella. In the novel, Isabella's marriage is clearly depicted as abusive and inescapable. In the film, however, there seemed to be an implication that she actively participates in, and perhaps even derives some satisfaction from, the cruelty of the relationship. Whether or not that was the filmmakers' intention, it sat uncomfortably with me. 

Perhaps this is the community lawyer in me speaking, but I am sensitive to the ways abuse, particularly violence against women, is portrayed on screen. I couldn't really see what this change added to the story, and it risked muddying the novel's much clearer depiction of coercion and abuse. 

Secondly, with such a strong focus on the romantic and sexual relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff, I found the film surprisingly slow. There is a great deal of yearning, pining and emotional intensity, but not a lot else happens. I kept waiting for the story to shift gears or build towards something bigger, and then suddenly the ending arrived, feeling more anticlimactic than devastating. 

Final thoughts

Did I enjoy the film? Yes, I did. 

 Was I particularly excited by it? Not really. I didn't object to the reimagining of the plot, nor did I feel protective of the source material in the way that some viewers seem to have been. My issue was simply that the resulting film felt a little too uneventful for my tastes. It's a perfectly watchable adaptation and an interesting reinterpretation of a classic, but it isn't one that I imagine I'll be raving about or rushing to recommend. If nothing else, though, it did encourage me to return to Wuthering Heights itself, and thanks to Joanne Froggatt's audiobook, I appreciated the novel far more the second time around.

Feeling down in the slumps

 

It occured to me today, as today I posted my review of Intperpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri and updated my blog, that I am in a reading slump. 

I would actually go a little further than that and suggest that a light fog of depression has descended upon me like a cloud sinking out of the sky to obscure my way. It's not so thick that I can't see through it, but it's thick enough to get in my way and make everything seem a little bit harder than usual. My last review was in early April and I've read four books in the last two months. 

It's much harder to find joy at the moment. I'm overhwelmed and feel a little in a state of constant low level anxiety about work and my family. Everything really. Finishing my book club book was hard slog and writing the review was even harder. 

In an attempt to pull myself through I have purchased the next book in one of my current favourites, the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. I hope that reading something that would ordinarily have me hooked by the second page will help. 

Literary Wives Book Club (June 2026): Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Literary Wives is an on-line book group that examines the meaning and role of wife in different books. Every other month, we post and discuss a book with this question in mind: What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife? 

Don’t forget to check out the other members of Literary Wives to see what they have to say about the book!

Other participants:

• Kate of booksaremyfavouriteandbest
• Naomi of Consumed by Ink
• Rebecca of Bookish Beck
• Kay of What Me Read
• Marianne of Let's Read

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

I have to begin this review by admitting that I am not usually a short story reader. I have always gravitated towards novels, I think I just tend to prefer to spend a bit more time inside one story. It gives me more of an escape from the day-to-day and a place to still my otherwise very busy mind.  That's the good thing about this book club, though - it consistently pushes me outside my usual reading habits. 

Before I get into what Interpreter of Maladies says about wives I thought I would start I would start with some reflections on the collection as a whole. The collection centres largely on Bengali and Indian characters who are often living between cultures, and it explores the relationships between characters who usually share a marriage or a family, but seem unable to truly communicate with one another. Even though some of the stories are quite short Lahiri is still able to portray marriages, family histories, disappointments, migrations, betrayals, and entire emotional lives so acutely and pignantly it's not wonder that the collection won the Pulitzer Prize. 

The story that has stayed with me most is probably A Temporary Matter. Shoba and Shukumar are a married couple whose relationship has been devastated by the stillbirth of their baby. During a series of planned evening blackouts, they begin telling one another secrets in the dark. At first it feels as though the confessions might bring them closer together, but it becomes clear that the grief they have felt has irreparably kept them apart from each other and they are reflecting on what has been at it's end. It is a heartbreaking story, and one that felt particularly relevant to the Literary Wives theme because it asks whether love alone is enough when two people are grieving differently.

Another story that seems directly connected to the idea of wives is Interpreter of Maladies itself. Mrs Das initially appears to be a modern and confident wife travelling through India with her husband and children. Yet as the story unfolds we learn how dissatisfied Mrs Das is with her life. She confesses of her infedility to their tour driver, not so much for advice but jstu to connect with someone. Eventhough she is surrounded by her family on a wonderful holiday, she is desperately lonely. 

Loneliness is something that recurs throughout the collection. In The Blessed House, newlyweds clash over a series of Christian objects discovered in their new home. It's funny but it's also two people who have entered marriage without really knowing or understanding each other. Sanjeev spends much of the story frustrated by his wife and also fascinated by her. Rather than them having come to know each other and embarking on their life with each other in a partnership, they are still getting to know each other, a risky way to start a marriage perhaps. 

Overall, Lahiri rarely presents marriage as a place of certainty or fulfilment.  Her married characters often seem to be negotiating misunderstandings, disappointments, cultural expectations, private regrets. Essentially I think Intepreter of Maladies is trying to portray to the difficulty of truly knowing another person, a common theme in the books we have read for the Literary Wives Book Club. 

So what does Interpreter of Maladies say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?

For me, the strongest theme was invisibility. Often the wives appear to be carrying emotional burdens that their husbands either cannot see or do not fully understand. Some are lonely. Some are homesick. Some are disappointed by the reality of their lives. Some are living with secrets. Some are trapped in their grief. Yet very few feel able to express those feelings openly within their marriages. The couples rarely communicate honestly with each other. It's fascinating to see so many people who have committed to sharing their lives with one another, many of whom would have done so from a place of deep love, and yet they are so far apart from each other. 

For someone who does not usually read short story collections, I found this surprisingly rewarding. Not every story resonated equally with me, but by the end, I understood why Lahiri's work is so highly regarded. She had an extraordinary ability to capture entire relationships in just a handful of pages per story. 

Review: The Secret History of Christmas (2023) by Bill Bryson (audiobook)

 I've always loved Bill Bryson's works. I was introduced to his writing with A Short History of Nearly Everything and can still remember how laugh-out-loud funny Notes from a Big Country was. I say this as context for how excited I was when I stumbled across this free audiobook on Audible (a recent subscription I've been enjoying). I knew immediately The Secret History of Christmas would be perfect fodder for my long drives to and from the office, and I wasn't wrong. 

As the title suggests, this audiobook delves into the history of Christmas - from its origins in pagan times, through to its connection to the birth of Jesus and Christian traditions and then the rise of Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, aka Santa Claus, and the secular Christmas that most (here in Australia at least) enjoy today. My favourite chapter traces the history of Christmas foods through time, including the origins of the plum pudding (spoilter alert: it was plumless). And Bryson doesn't just explore the history of Christmas. He also delves into human psychology with a look at gift giving traditions of Christmas, thoughfullly considering gift giving for the giver and the recipient. 

Adding something special to the experience, Bryson himself narrates the audiobook, the benefit of which is that he knows exactly the perfect tone and inflection to make the listening experience a joyful one. He mades the humour, funnier and the wit, wittier. 

This could be a boring book of facts, but in Bryson's talented hands it's a joy to listen to and learn about the history of an annual holiday that brings so many people together. 

3 / 5 Enjoyable, readable and reliable. 

Favourite Books of 2025

I always find these posts a bit hard to write because I read so many great books and so many of them were quite different. Having said that, while I know I am a bit late to the party, it's better late than never. These are the books that stuck with me.

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
This follows Eilis as she leaves Ireland for New York, and is so much about people feeling like they don't beling anywhere. There’s nothing overly dramatic about Brooklyn, but that probably contributes to why it felt so real.  It’s about small choices and homesickness and was very moving. 

Conclave by Robert Harris
Not high literary fiction but it's on my list because it was one of those books that completely pulled me in. It’s set during the election of a new Pope, which doesn’t sound like it should be this gripping, but it really is. It has all the tension of a political thriller, with secrets, alliances and quiet manoeuvring happening behind closed doors. I listended on audiobook and it was a highly satisfying read.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
This is such a strange and beautiful book. The setting alone, an endless house of halls and statues, is so vivid, and the story slowly unfolds in a way that keeps you slightly off balance the whole time. Piranesi himself is such an unusual character, and there’s something quite moving about the way he sees the world. It’s one of those books that’s hard to describe, but very easy to get lost in. One of my favourites of the year. 

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
I loved how immersive this was. Set in 18th-century Maine, it follows a midwife who becomes caught up in a murder investigation. It’s also about community and women’s roles in a very particular time and place. It has a strong sense of atmosphere and a really compelling central character. It felt both thoughtful and very readable, which is always a good combination.

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear
This felt like a quieter, more reflective take on a mystery. Maisie is such an interesting character. She is part investigator, part psychologist and the movel and Maisie's personal story is shaped by the aftermath of World War I. This story is about the weight of what people have been through. I can see why this series has such a loyal following. I can't read the rest of them fast enough.

100 Years of Betty by Debra Oswald
This was a bit different from a lot of what I usually read, but it really worked for me. It traces a life across decades, and there’s something about that kind of storytelling that makes you reflect on time in a different way. 

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman
This was just a really enjoyable read. It follows two women who quietly take it upon themselves to intervene in situations where they think justice isn’t being served. There’s a slightly subversive feel to it, and I loved that it centred women who are so often overlooked. It’s clever, a bit mischievous, and very easy to read.

Babel by R. F. Kuang
This is  set in an alternative Oxford where language and translation are tied to power, and it explores some big ideas around colonialism, knowledge and control. 

Looking back, this feels like a pretty good snapshot of my reading year. There were some comfort reads and some surprises.

Six Degrees of Separation (Apr): From The Correspondent to The Bronze Horseman

 The meme is hosted by Books are My Favourite Best and is described thus: On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book. Each person’s chain will look completely different. It doesn’t matter what the connection is or where it takes you – just take us on the journey with you.

This month starts with The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, a book I have never heard of but I now know is written in an epistolery style. Letters - it makes me immediately makes me think of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and the importance that various letters play in moving the story forward. 

Pride and Prejudice takes to me to The Benevolent Society of Ill Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman, a detective novel also set in Regency England with two strong female leads living authentic lives and solving a few myseteries along the way. 

From there I jump to Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear, a book of the same kind - strong female lead who is a private detective, living outside of the normal for women of the time period, which is between WWI and WWII. Maisie lives true to herself and her values but is greatly impacted by the trauma of having been a nurse in the trenches during WWI. 

The Women by Kristin Hannah also explores the impact of war on women, this time on the forgotten nurses that servied during the Vietnam War and how they were treated upon their return. Kristin Hannah also explores the experience of women in war in her book Winter Garden, this time delving into the Siege of Leningrad. 

That finally brings me to The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simmons, which for a long time I would have said was one of my favourite books. The Bronze Horseman also explores the Siege of Leningrad, but is an entirely historical novel with some elements of romance. This has actually been a good reminder to read it again some time soon. 

Review: The Host by Stephenie Meyer

Let me set the scene. Earth has been slowly and insidiously invaded by an alien species, the Parasites, that have been secretly inserting themselves into the bodies of human hosts so successfully that the invasion of Earth is almost over by the time it's discovered. Pockets of human resistence exist, but are ineffective against the scale of the parasitic invasion. Once a Parasite is inserted into its host, the host's human essense is irredeemably destroyed, allowing the Parasite to live independently in the human body, accessing the body's processes and in some ways it memories - its likes and dislikes and feelings. The Parasites have been travelling the Universe, moving from host species to host species. Despite their way of living and methods of colonisation, they claim to be a non-violent non-confrontational species, that looks down on humans for their savage way of existence. 

The Host is the story of Wanderer, a centuries old Parasite that has been inserted into the host body of Melanie Stryder, a recently caught member of the human resistence. The only issue is, Melanie's consciousness still remains inside her body, co-existing and in some ways resisting Wanderer's possession of her body. Wanderer and Melanie must live together to achieve their common goal - to find Melanie's younger brother Jamie and partner Jared, who she left behind when caught by the Parasites. 

The novel is science fiction, but would easily work for people who have little interest in science fiction. The focus is far more on the human elements of the story. Melanie seeks to control her own body, while Wanderer forms relationships on her own terms with the humans that she meets. She wants to support the humans she comes to love but is horrified and repelled by their capacity for violence and their desire to destroy her own kind. Wanderer is incapable of viewing her own species invasion of Earth and destruction of human in the same terms as she sees the human resistenace to this invasion. On an even more personal level, Melanie desires nothing more than than to love Jared again, while Wanderer experiences the strength of those feelings while forming her own romantic connection. 

This was a re-read for me and I still enjoyed it. It isn't high literary fiction, or even particularly well written. But it is an easily accesible and interesting gateway into the world of science fiction that will work well for many people. I enjoy this book, and it will always be something for me to return to when I need something readable and enjoyable to keep me entertained.

3/5: It was an enjoyable read.

 

Review: The Community by Christine Gregory

This book was a birthday present from my ten-year-old daughter. She told me she saw it in the shop and thought of me.Which, honestly, might be my new favourite kind of book recommendation.

The Community, by Christine Gregory, is a murder mystery set in a small, environmentally-minded co-operative town in regional Queensland – a place called Steels Creek, tucked in among bushland and built around the idea of doing things differently.

Our main character, Nils Larsen, is a disgraced journalist who has come to Steels Creek to disappear. Or at least to recover. He carries around what he thinks of as a murky past, though it slowly becomes clear that what actually haunts him is his role in exposing police corruption and everything that followed from that. He’s divorced, slightly adrift, and sees his daughter only occasionally. When she does visit, there is a quiet but heavy tension between them. She is still angry at him for what his choices cost their family.

When a body is found in a local waterhole, Nils is pulled back into investigation. The murder ends up touching not just him, but his daughter and her friends as well, adding a personal closeness to the case.

This is very much a slow-burn crime novel. The story takes its time and lets you get to know the town and the people in it including the long-timers, the love interest and of course the inevitable red herrings. 

In many ways, it’s fairly standard crime fiction. There’s nothing wildly new or exciting. But I don’t really mean that as a criticism. It’s a well-built, familiar kind of story and that's often what I’m in the mood for.

What really stayed with me, though, were the descriptions of the bush. I grew up near bushland and spent a lot of time bushwalking, and the way the landscape is written here felt true. The heat and the stillness of the air were all so vividly done that I could almost feel it while I was reading.

I’ve already forgotten most of the fine details of the plot (which probably tells you something about how much space this book is taking up in my brain now) but I do remember how compulsive it was while I was in it. It’s the kind of novel you keep picking up for “just one more chapter”, and then suddenly realise you’ve read far more than you planned to.

And, of course, I will always have a soft spot for a book that my daughter looked at and thought, Mum would like this.

The Classics Club

I've decided to join the Classics Club, the idea of which is to set a goal of reading 50 classics within 5 years from the date that you start the challenge. On a higher level, "the point isn’t to challenge people to read by a strict list — but to create for ourselves a habit and a curiosity about literature". 

So what's a classic: "for the purposes of your project list, it’s your choice, really. Modern classics, ancient classics, Eastern canon, Western canon, Persophone, Virago, African literature, children’s classics… You make your own goal, and you decide what is a classic".

My challenge commences: March 2026

The Classics Club Book List 

(1831) Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
(1838) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
(1847) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte 
(1847) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
(1847) Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
(1848) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
(1855) North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
(1865) Force and Fraud by Ellen Davitt
(1898) The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
(1899) The Awakening by Kate Chopin
(1899) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
(1929) Passing by Nella Larsen
(1937) Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
(1939) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
(1940) The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
(1945) The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
(1948) The Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
(1949) Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
(1951) My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
(1954) Lord of the Flies by William Golding
(1958) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
(1958) Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
(1959) The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
(1961) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
(1961) Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto
(1961) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
(1962) A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine l'Engle
(1964) My Brother Jack by George Johnston
(1967) Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
(1967) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(1969) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula le Guin
(1977) The Shining by Stephen King
(1977) The Silmariliion by JRR Tolkien 
(1977) Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Andersen
(1978) The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
(1981) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
(1982) Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
(1985) Love in a Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(1987) It's Raining in Mango by Thea Astley
(1989) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
(1991) Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
(1992) The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
(1994) Death of River Guide by Richard Flannagan
(1997) The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
(2004) Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
(2005) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 
(2006) Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
(2009) Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
(2011) All That I Am by Anna Funder
(2013) The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flannagan

Literary Wives (March 2026): Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell

Literary Wives is an on-line book group that examines the meaning and role of wife in different books. Every other month, we post and discuss a book with this question in mind: What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife? 

Don’t forget to check out the other members of Literary Wives to see what they have to say about the book!

Other participants:

• Kate of booksaremyfavouriteandbest
• Naomi of Consumed by Ink
• Rebecca of Bookish Beck
• Kay of What Me Read
• Marianne of Let's Read

Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell

Mrs Bridge is set in middle-class Kansas City in the years between the late 1920s and the post-war period, and quietly follows the life of India Bridge, a respectable, well-off wife and mother living exactly the life she is supposed to want. 

The story unfolds through a series of small, precise vignettes which show moments in India Bridge’s life that, when taken together, give you an almost perfect sense of her character and her world. We meet her in her late teens and then follow her through her children’s younger years, their adolescence, and later, as they leave home and begin lives of their own. 

She lives a lonely life, with a husband who works almost constantly, and within social expectations that quietly but firmly shape everything she does. She couldn’t necessarily articulate that sense of restraint, but she clearly feels disconnected from herself and from her own life. Early on, she reflects that as a young woman she had felt marriage and family life might not be for her but she wasn’t taken seriously. That life simply wasn’t presented as a real option. Women (and men, to a lesser extent) were given one narrow path: marriage, children and domesticity. Mrs Bridge falls into what is expected of her, and from there she keeps rolling forward, never quite feeling like she is steering. She is always the passenger, never the driver. This idea is beautifully and painfully captured in the final scene of the book. 

I felt a little disconnected from her as a character but I think Connell does this deliberately. We feel removed from India because she is removed from herself. There are moments when she comes close to recognising what is missing and trying to do something about it, like when she leaves a potentially controversial book lying around, hoping it might start a conversation with her husband. But she always retreats. It is as though she is too afraid to follow these flickers of awareness through, too frightened to really confront the emptiness she senses in her life. 

There are a couple of possible reasons for this. She may be afraid of what she will discover if she looks too closely. Or she may simply never have been given the emotional language or life skills to identify and act on her own needs. This is a time when women were barely acknowledged as having needs at all, let alone encouraged to take them seriously. 

One of the most unsettling moments in the novel is her strangely muted response to a friend being killed by their own child. It feels as though she is frightened of strong feeling itself. Possibly she knows that if she faces the horror and pain she not be able to contain herself.  

There is also an undercurrent of casual, unquestioned racism running through the novel that feels entirely of its time. It appears in off-hand remarks, in social assumptions, and in the way people who sit outside Mrs Bridge’s world of comfort and respectability barely register as fully realised lives.  The prejudice is not loud or dramatic; it is simply absorbed into the background of everyday life. In a way, this mirrors Mrs Bridge’s own emotional blindness. Just as she rarely interrogates the limits placed on her as a woman, she also never questions the social order that places her so securely in it and others so far outside it. 

So much of what Mrs Bridge does, she does because she thinks she should. Hosting cocktail parties. Hiring a maid. Keeping special hand towels for special occasions that she hopes no one will use and no one ever does. These rituals of correctness become substitutes for meaning. They are how she measures whether she is succeeding at her life. 

Her relationships with her children are shaped in exactly the same way. She is deeply invested in what they should be doing, what they should care about, and how they should behave. She is so focused on the “shoulds” that she misses the quiet, ordinary pleasure of discovering who her children actually are and of building relationships with them that are genuinely mutual. 

What does Mrs Bridge say about being a wife?

What Mrs Bridge ultimately says about wives, and about women like Mrs Bridge, is so beautifully restrained. It shows how a life can be carefully constructed, socially admired, and still feel profoundly uninhabited or empty. Marriage does not ruin Mrs Bridge and Mr Bridge isn't cruel to her or her children. Mrs Bridge shows something something more insidious: a world that trains women to be accommodating, pleasant and grateful, while preventing them from coming to know themselves and be themselves.

This is a wonderful novel. It is short yet perfectly crafted. I really can’t fault it and I would recommend it to everyone.

Literary Wives Book Club

Literary Wives is an on-line book group that examines the meaning and role of wife in different books. Every other month, we post and discuss a book with this question in mind: 

What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife? 

Reviews

June 2025 The Constant Wife by W Somerset Maughan

September 2025 Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins

December 2025 The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor

March 2026 Mrs Bridge by Evan S Connell 

June 2026 Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Don’t forget to check out the other members of Literary Wives to see what they have to say about the book!

Other participants

Kate of booksaremyfavouriteandbest

Kate can’t remember a time in her life that didn’t include books. She started her blog in 2012 as a way of extending her bookish-circle – and extend it, it did! Kate lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband and four children. When she’s not reading, she can be found swimming laps at her local pool, dreaming of her next beach holiday, or walking by the Yarra River. Kate works as a grief counsellor.

Naomi of Consumed by Ink

Once upon a time, Naomi worked as a biologist, math tutor, and early childhood educator. Since then, she has been happily reading bedtime stories to three eager listeners, and hopes this will never change. She loves traveling around the Canadian Maritimes with her family, visiting the used book stores and bakeries.

Rebecca of Bookish Beck

Originally from Maryland, Rebecca lives in Newbury, England and works as a freelance proofreader and book reviewer. She also curates a neighborhood Little Free Library and volunteers with community gardening projects and at her local public library.

Kay of What Me Read

Kay is a long-time professional technical writer (now retired—yippee!) who also taught composition and technical-writing courses at the college level. She loves reading all kinds of books. She is also a moderator for The Classics Club. She is the secret author of three (sadly unpublished) trashy romance novels and one literary novel.

Marianne of Let's Read

Marianne is 68 years old, has been married for 42 years, has two boys. Christoph, 35, works in Amsterdam as an editor, and Philip, 31, works in Brussels at the European Parliament. The family is German but has lived in the Netherlands for 20 years after 6 years in England. Marianne hasn’t worked since she had her second child, but she used to work as a foreign language secretary and a lawyer’s assistant. She did a lot of volunteer work before she fell ill with constant migraines. In 2019, her husband retired and they returned to Germany. They now live near her family. She loves reading, crafts, photography and languages

Read Christie 2026

For as along as I can remember I have been an avid Christie fan. I have read all of her Poirot and Marple novels, and many of her others. Despite this, I continue to read and re-read her novels, never tiring them. 

With this as my inspiration, I have decided to join "Read Christie 2026", described as: 

Welcome to Read Christie 2026! This year's reading challenge will focus on Agatha Christie's Biggest, Best and Beloved stories! We'll be reading a new book each month, plus throughout the year we will cover An Autobiography. From the biggest inspiration to the best to read in one setting, beloved in your collection to the best according to Christie, our reading prompts promise to deliver a year of fantastic stories for fans. Plus, we will be providing book club guides, pertinent questions, and plenty of insights to help you get the most out of the challenge.

What are the books?

My Quick Reviews

January: Best Opening - The Body In the Library

The Body in the Library has a very bold opening. Mrs Bantry is awaken by her maid informing her that there is a body in the library. Her husband has stumbled upon a young blonde woman if fancy evening aware, dead in their library. Mrs Bantry, feeling for her husband around whom local gossip inevitably begins to swirl, calls upon her long term friend Miss Marple to help her to solve the murder. 

A fun fact, when I was a young girl my copy of this book was missing the final pages and I would read it without ever knowing who the guilty party was. Fortunately this was inevitabley resolved. 

February: Beloved Character(s) - Mrs McGinty's Dead

Why is this one about beloved characters? Admission from me - I don't feel attached to any of these characters. I suppose Ariadne Oliver is always good fun, but someone I don't think that's what they're getting at. I can't read this one without picturing the David Suchet episode either. I'm not sure whether that helps or hinders my reading of the story. 

March: Biggest Impact on You As a Young Reader - Murder on the Orient Express

April: Beloeved in Your Collection - A Carribean Mystery

May: Best Short Story Collection - The Labours of Hercules

June: Best to Read in One Sitting - The Murder of Roger Akroyd

July: Best-Kept Secret - The Rose and the Yew Tree

August: Beloved Duo - By the Pricking of My Thumbs

September: Best According to Agatha - Endless Night

October: Best Cold Case - Sleeping Murder

November: Biggest Inspiration - And Then There Were None

December: Best Seasonal Read - Hercule Poirot's Christmas

All Year Round: Best Book About Agatha Christie - An Autobiography 

Review: Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her family and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and travelled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But these two estranged women come together at their father's deathbed standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, to hear the one last promise he extracts from the women in his life. 

 It begins with a story like no other. A captivating, mysterious love story that spans sixty-five years and moves from war torn Leningrad in the 1940's to modern-day Alaska. The three women are brought together by a story so unexpected and extraordinary that when Meredith and Nina finally learn the secret of their mother's past and uncover a truth so terrible, it will shake the very foundation of the family and who they think they are. 

Following the death of their father, sisters Meredith and Nina must come together and care for their elderly mother, Anya, a woman who is cold, distant and never offered them the warmth of a mother's love. This has had a major impact on their family dynamics. Meredith and Nina have bonded deeply with their father but their ability to love in their own personal relationships has been stymied by the lack of complete love they have experienced as children. Winter Garden traces their journey coming to understand their mother as she fulfils her husband's dying wish to share her life story with her daughters. 

The narrative shifts between past and present as Anya slowly shares the story of her experiences caring for her family during the Siege of Leningrad. What unfolds are her traumatic experiences of love, loss, starvation, deprivation, the brutality of war and the horrific toll it took on her family. Meredith and Nina unexpectedly come to support their mother as she gradually comes to terms with her trauma, and through the sharing of her life story the family gradually begin to forge new bonds. 

I read The Women by Hannah last year, another exploration of the impact of war through the eyes of the women who experience it and Winter Garden didn't disappoint. In fact, when presented with a twist in the final pages of the book I was caught by surprise when it brought me to tears. I say it caught me by surprise because in truth there were times when I was reading the novel that I felt like something was missing. Hannah's exploration of the sisters' emotional development didn't always feel as deep as it could have and the behaviour didn't always feel true to character. I also couldn't help but be reminded of Paulina Simmons's exploration of the Siege of Leningrad in The Bronze Horseman and in comparison, Winter Garden left me a little wanting. I accept that's probably an unfair comparison given The Bronze Horseman is an historical novel set during the siege and Winter Garden is a far more contemporary novel that explores the Whitson family dynamics. That's why I was caught surprise when I was brought to tears by the end of the novel. 

 Winter Garden explores how our own personalities and lives are shaped by our parents, family dynamics, childhood experiences and in this case intergenerational trauma caused by war and displacement. 

What I am coming to really appreciate about Hannah's writing is how capable she is of immediately creating a connection between the reader and the characters. I fall straight into her stories so naturally and look forward to reading more by her.

3.5 / 5 stars: I was caught by surprised at this novel's impact on me and I recommend it. 

Review: Conclave by Robert Harris

I went into Conclave not really knowing what to expect, which is often the best way to read a book. I ended up listening to it as an audiobook, and that turned out to be a great choice. The narration by Roy McMillan was excellent and really suited the tone of the story. This was one of those books where I kept looking for excuses to keep listening.

The novel is set almost entirely within the Vatican, following the death of a pope and the closed-door process of electing his successor. Cardinal Lomeli is tasked with overseeing the conclave, responsible for keeping order and ensuring the rules are followed as the cardinals gather and voting begins. As the days pass, tensions rise, alliances shift, and secrets start to surface. What looks, on the surface, like a solemn and sacred process slowly reveals itself to be far more complicated.

What surprised me most about this book was how compulsive it was. There is very little in the way of obvious action. No chase scenes, no dramatic confrontations. Instead, the tension builds quietly and steadily through character, atmosphere, and the gradual uncovering of what each man wants and what he is willing to hide.

Harris really leans into the reality of religious leadership. There is surprisingly little actual religion in the book. Faith exists, but it often feels secondary to ambition, power, ego, and fear. These are men who are supposed to be spiritual leaders, but they are also ego-driven men in power and that tension makes the whole thing feel unsettlingly real.

The setting adds to that sense of claustrophobia. Locked rooms, whispered conversations, carefully chosen words, and the constant sense that everyone is watching everyone else. By the time the story reaches its conclusion, the pressure has built so effectively that even small moments feel loaded with meaning.

I did not expect to enjoy this as much as I did, but I found it hard to stop. It is smart, tense, and quietly gripping, and the audiobook format only heightened that experience. This was a really satisfying read, especially if you enjoy novels where the drama comes from people, not plot twists or spectacle (although I'm not going to lie, there is a plot twist).

4 stars: for being such a compulsive read.

Review: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

I picked up Piranesi after hearing it recommended on the ABC Radio National Top 100 Books of the 21st Century countdown, and it turned out to be one of those books that feels quietly special while you are reading it, and then keeps revisiting you afterwards.

The story is told through the journals of Piranesi, who lives in an enormous House made up of endless halls filled with statues. The lower levels flood with the tides, the upper levels are dry and calm, and the House seems to provide everything he needs (albeit not much). There is only one other person in his world, someone he calls the Other, who visits occasionally and is searching for some kind of hidden knowledge. As Piranesi records his days, small details begin to feel off, and gradually you realise that there is much more going on than he understands.

That is about as much as I want to say about the plot, because this really is a book you should discover slowly.

What I loved most about Piranesi was the feeling of it. The world is mysterious and magical, but it also feels incredibly real. Clarke builds it so carefully that you accept it almost without question, even when you do not fully understand how it works. I could see it clearly in my head, and I did not want to leave it.

In a strange way, it reminded me of the stories I used to make up as a child. Those imagined worlds that felt complete and absorbing and totally logical while you were inside them. I think that has a lot to do with Piranesi himself. He moves through his world with such openness and appreciation. He delights in it. He notices things. He is grateful for what he has. That straightforward way of seeing made the book feel both gentle and profound.

The writing is beautiful but very restrained. It never feels like it is trying too hard. The mystery unfolds slowly, and even when the book ends, it feels like there is still more there to think about. I finished it with the sense that I had not fully unpacked everything yet, and I liked that.

I kept wishing I was reading this as part of a book club. It feels like the kind of book that would only get better through conversation, because there is so much in it that could be interpreted and discussed. Power, knowledge, memory, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves.

This is strange, thoughtful, and beautifully made. I really loved it.

4.5 stars: Near perfection and highly recommended. 

Review: The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman

I’ve really enjoyed the Thursday Murder Club series. It has been one of those dependable, easy reading comfort series for me, with familiar characters and just enough mystery to keep things moving. I picked up The Impossible Fortune expecting more of the same but this one really let me down.

The story kicks off at Joyce’s daughter’s wedding, which should be a fun starting point. During the celebrations, Elizabeth is quietly approached by a man who claims someone is trying to kill him. From there, the Thursday Murder Club finds itself tangled up in a complicated mystery involving missing money, secret storage facilities, and people who are not quite who they seem. As usual, the group pokes around, asks questions, and follows a trail of clues.

That's the plot but the problem for me was that none of it felt interesting. The mystery itself was boring and instead of building real tension, the book relies heavily on chapters that end with mini cliffhangers. After a while this just became annoying rather than compelling. 

By the middle of the book I was already losing interest, and toward the end I was skimming just to see how it would all wrap up. The resolution, when it finally arrived, felt flat and anti-climactic. There was no real sense of surprise or satisfaction, just a feeling that I had spent a lot of time getting to a fairly underwhelming conclusion.

What disappointed me most is that this book felt like a repetition of ideas from earlier in the series without the spark that made those books work. The characters are still likeable, but they are no longer enough to carry the story on their own. Everything started to blur together, and the whole thing felt like much of a muchness.

I did finish it, but more out of obligation than enjoyment. After loving this series for so long, it is a shame to say that this might be where I stop. The Impossible Fortune was not terrible, but it was boring, and that is somehow worse.

If you are a long-time fan, you might still want to read it just to keep up with the characters. But for me, this one confirmed that my time with the Thursday Murder Club may be over.

2 stars: While I recommend the first book of this series, I wouldn't recommend continuing. 

WWW Wednesday: 14 January 2026

 WWW Wednesday is a meme that is hosted by Taking on a World of Words. It's a very simple premise of sharing with others The Three Ws:

What are you currently reading? 
What did you recently finish reading? 
What do you think you’ll read next?

What am I currently reading?

I am currently reading The Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah. I really enjoyed The Women last year and have The Nightinglale on my TBR list for this year. Hannah's books are so easy to read - from the moment I start reading them I am engaged and it feels so natural, like I am there with the characters. The Winter Garden is about the relationship between two young girls and their cold mother, as they come to understand more about her and how she came to be the way that she is. 

I am also re-reading The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie ahead of the release of the netflix adaption shortly. 

What did I just finish?

Bunny by Mona Awad. Wow. I still don't quite know what to make of this book but I do know that I was thinking about it for days afterwards. What a crazy, gruesome journey. It follows Samantha who is undertaking a creative writing degree at a university, and her experiences as she joins a clique of seemingly sweet girls she terms the bunnies. It seems to begin as a story about the academic experiences and evolves into a surreal horror story. Did I love it? I mean, no - but it has had a lasting impression on me which I think says something positive about the story and the writing. 

What will I read next?

Who knows? Where ever my mood takes me.

2025: A Year in Books - Reflections

Quick stats

Books completed	75
Fiction	72
Non-fiction	3
Australian authors	25
Female authors	61
Translated fiction	2
Crime fiction	39
Re-reads	21

If I had to sum up my reading for 2025 then I would say:

 

2025 was a steady reading year for me. I returned to familiar voices, found comfort and order in crime fiction, supported Australian authors, and mostly chose books that could live alongside my busy life rather than take me away from it.

Crime fiction: structure and entertainment

If I define crime fiction broadly, including murder mysteries, detective novels, young adult fiction and crime series, then I read 39 works of crime fiction in 2025 - 53% of my reading. Crime fiction clearly dominates for me. In some ways I find this surprising because I wouldn't identify as someone who particularly prioritises crime. I think what it shows is that crime is almost a default reading mode for me, but hopefully not in a shallow way. 

I return frequently to:

• Golden Age crime (Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Ngaio March)
• Series detectives (Jacqueline Winspear, Kerry Greenwood, Dervla Tiernan, Robert Galbraith), and
• Contemporary Australian crime (Benajamin Stevenson, Jane Harper, Christopher White, Sulari Gentill). 

I obviously favour series and familiar detectives, contained worlds and narrative momentum and resolution. My reflections on this are that crime fiction offers me a reliable narrative structure with a clear beginning, middle and end. It offers me something grounding when my attention is stretched or limited, thus providing a way to stay connected to reading even when I am busy. Crime for me isn't about chasing thrills or gore. In crime fiction I find order and often familiar voices to keep me grounded.  

Crime as a default reading mode also means that when I read a non-crime books they stand out for me even more. Crime fiction offers the reliability and my other reading offers me something new and different. 

Deep affection for Australian writing

Books by Australian authors made up 34% of my reading in 2025, and they appear constantly across many different genres:

• Crime (Kerry Greenwood, Jane Harper, Bejamin Stevenson, Sulari Gentill)
• Contemporary fiction (Madeleine Grey)
• Literary fiction (Charlotte Wood, Hannah Kent, Peter Carey)
• Non-fiction / Memoir (Hannah Kent, Helen Garner). 

I take from this a desire for places, people and experiences that I recognise and characters that feel culturally legible and emotionally familiar to me. Common experiences and emotions can be found throughout the world of course, but reading Australian fiction is something that I do deliberately as well to support Australian authors. 

Reading as comfort and continuity

There is a lot of re-reading that pops up across the year (specifically 28% of my reading), for example the Harry Potter series, Phryne Fisher series and books by Agatha Christie. A lot of these books I read at night time when I can't sleep or listen to as audiobooks while I am driving to and from work. This is about reading for continuity - keeping it up even when I am tired or distracted. 

It isn't nostalgia, so much as maintenance reading - books that hold me steady. 

Serious literary fiction but selectively and intentionally

I did read some challening and weighty books by authors such as:

• Han Kang
• Colson Whitehead
• Percival Everett
• Peter Carey
• RF Kuang
• Min Jin Lee
• Ann Patchett
• Claire Keegan

But I read them more sparingly than other types of fiction, and when considered in light of the order in which I read books, they are surrounded by crime or other comfort reads. I reflect that I still want depth and ambition in my reading but not at the expense of enjoyment or momentum in my reading overall. This means that I was more deliberate about which books I chose and was careful not to attempt books that asked something more of me than I was able to give. 

Kindness, morality and human decency

Even across genres there was a throughline of ethical choices, how people behave under pressure, small acts against large systems and compassion in constrained circumstances. Even my crime reads are more about the humane that the brutal. 

Books where I see this include:

• Small Things Like These
• The Soul of Kindness
• Bel Canto
• Pachinko
• The Women
• Wicked

The year of audiobooks

Finally - this was the very first year that I explored the world of audiobooks - inspired by the 2 hours of driving that I need to undertake to get to and from my new office. Because I was listening to them while driving, my audiobooks choices we more about practical reading - rereading or light reading. I will definitely be listening to more audiobooks in 2026. 

That's me for 2025 - looking forward to 2026.