Analytics


Monday 8 December 2008

Gaynor Arnold - Girl in a Blue Dress

This book was nominated for the Booker Prize this year. I accept that is well written and well researched but beyond that I just did not get the point of the novel. It is a thinly disguised Biography of the wife of Charles Dickens, and so for me it was something and nothing. Why was it not a biography? Or if this was too limiting why was it not a factionalised account of their marriage. In this book I just kept asking myself, now was this true for Dickens or was it not? It was a great distraction. I would have preferred not to have been told that is was based on Dickens and then I could have read it as a fictional novel. Having said that it might be a good book for a reading group for just this reason. It also raises issues with women in society at that time, and the relationship the public has to fame and the famous.

No comments: