A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

I mentioned this short story collection in my previous review of Fall of Poppies .   Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre  is edited by Tracy Chevalier and features stories written by many of today's popular authors, such as Audrey Niffenegger, Francine Prose, Emma Donoghue, and others.  All of the stories are inspired by the British classic Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, specifically by one of the most famous lines in English literature: "reader, I married him."  While most of the authors have read Jane Eyre , at least one or two had never read the novel before penning the short story for this collection, which I thought was interesting. I have also never read Jane Eyre ; however, I have seen the 2011 adaptation that starred Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender (you know, because British period drama).  I'm not as familiar with the story as I am with Jane Austen's novels (via the film adaptations; we all know I'm a Jane Austen fan), but ...

Remarkable Creatures is not the first Tracy Chevalier novel that I've read, and I'm sure it won't be the last.  Previously I've read The Virgin Blue and possibly another one.  I find that I always enjoy her novels and often they are hard to put down despite the long chapters.  Usually long chapters annoy me because I like to read a book by chapter, and I don't like to go away from it or put it down in the middle of a chapter.  Indeed sometimes long chapters are enough to put me off a book entirely.  And don't even get me started on Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea --an entire book made up of ONE chapter: it was enough to drive me to distraction. Set in early nineteenth century England, the chapters alternate between two narrators: Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot.  Anning and Philpot are two female historical figures that influenced fossil science despite the restrictions set upon their gender by nature of the time period.  The novel tells the ...