by Jane Harris
I picked up The Observations, by Jane Harris, because I adored Gillespie and I. I love unreliable narrators, because I get so much more story to pick apart. But reading Gillespie and I didn't prepare me for The Observations. I finished the book and realized I had been lied to—in the best ways possib...
Great fun. I love it when an author plays with a distinctive narrative voice, and this certainly qualifies. (There's also a brief section with another voice, the other female protagonist, who is the one doing the "observations" of her maid Bessy). Bessy actually made me laugh out loud several times,...
I enjoyed this, but I couldn't help feeling I was missing something. It was marketed as the next "Fingersmith", which it plainly isn't, being much more about the humour than the intrigue. I wasn't convinced by some of the dialogue either, it seemed a bit too modern for the time in which it was set. ...
I really enjoyed "The Observations" the narrator Bessy a young Irish girl forced into prostitution by her mother runs away and is taken in by the "Missus" Arabella Reid and becomes her maid. The two form a rather bizarre friendship with Bessy obsessively attached to the Missus, understandably consid...
NO SPOILERS!!!On completions:This is primarily a crime/mystery novel. Usually when I read fictional crime novels I cannot but loose interest b/c I KNOW this is all just one big story; there is no reality to it. Well, not with this book. I found it thoroughly entertaining. A light, fun read. As I poi...
Very intriguing book that kept my interest from beginning to end. The heroine, Bessy, is one of the more original heroines I've read in historical fiction in a while. She had some meat to her, some oomph, if you will. All the characters had their own original voice and were all interesting, even the...
Funny, moving and utterly compelling, this account of the experiences of a former prostitute turned house maid in the middle of the nineteenth century is written with tremendous verve. Fleeing her old life in Glasgow, Daisy (or Bessy as she becomes now that she has abandoned her former identity) wan...
This first novel starts with an cynical, humorous, original narrative voice that is all but lost to an overcomplicated and rambling ending. Which makes that first half of the book seem even better. The idea is that the narrator’s voice matures as the story is told, but I think Harris missed the oppo...
Log in with Facebook 
