History & Historical Fiction

This "cute" novel probably deserves a higher rating, but I wasn't expecting a young adult listen. That said, I admit curling up with it for an afternoon/evening listen when under the weather. For enjoyable and more solid listening on Queen Vic, however, I'd recommend to anyone over the age of 13 the nonfiction audiobook "We Two" which plays as smoothly as most fiction.

When Audible joined Amazon and upgraded the web site, they seem to have lost the "category" label on audiobooks. While the category label was sometimes misleading or even wrong, at least it prevented an accidental download of young adult lit.

This was my first reading of Scarlet Letter. Canadians aren't as exposed to it in high school/college as Americans. I can see that it endures for its landmark importance in American literature, but I would not have enjoyed the novel for itself had I not just finished Susan Cheever's American Bloomsbury, with its biographical details of Hawthorne's life, especially his relationship with Margaret Fuller whom she postulates as at least partial inspiration for Hester's courage, strength and philosophy.

With Hawthorne's background in mind and several audiobooks on 19th centruy American history recently "read," I enjoyed the lengthy "customs house" sketch/intro more than the rest of the novel.

Eliot and Hardy wrote later in the century than Hawthorne, but not that much later, and they were so much more adept at re-creating earlier periods in their nation's history and mentality. I can't help but wonder if Elizabeth Gaskill read Scarlett Letter before she wrote Ruth, supposedly the first Engish lit novel to tackle the subject of "fallen woman" sympathetically - there seems to be more than one similar character.

Scarlett Letter (not Ruth!) is still worth reading (or re-reading as an adult). This edition was well priced, with acceptable narration for the price- Hawthorne's sentences must be hard work for any narrator.

This is not really all about the plague, but uses that event as a starting pint to spin narratives about the century before and after the 1348-49 pestilence.

I had thought that Cantor would be difficult, but this was accessible, even entertaining (if you like late medieval social history). I preferred it to novels about the era, most of which are written in worse prose. If your primary listening interest is literature, this book can help establish the background for novels. If you are a fan of Brit Lit written or set in later periods, you will learn, for example, details of how and why all those estates became "entailed."

Cantor starts with facts from records -- inventories, litigation, occasionally art and literature -- to spin interlocking narratives. He occasionally tries to enter the mentality of the different classes. He mixes well-known names of the time with educated hunches about the life of the unremembered masses.

As a reviewer below notes, this method can be circular. The same style is used in "The Lodger Shakespeare," for example. I agree that the Tuckman book mentioned in the review below is more comprehensive, but the Tuchman and Cantor books are of much different length and intents, I think.

Cantor also includes a pre-SARS wake up call to danger of infectious disease in global village.

The narrator sounds like a late middle-aged, charming, slightly corny university prof-- and that's how I imagine Cantor.