Second paragraph of third chapter:I loved Tabitha very much. She was beautiful although so thin, and she would spend hours playing with me. We had a dollhouse that was like our own house, with a living room and a dining room and a big kitchen for the Marthas, and a father’s study with a desk and bookshelves. All the little pretend books on the ( Read more... )

One of my rereads of classic sf, the story of a very near future America which has been taken over by a sexually repressive theocracy, told by a woman who is being kept as a breeding slave by one of its leaders. Just a few points which jumped out at me:

I accidentally read this at the same time as Uncle Tom's Cabin, which made for some interesting ( Read more... )

Interesting character exploration of a woman imprisoned for murder in mid-19th century Canada, and her encounter with an early psychiatrist who tries to get to the truth of the crime; yet in a sense he is also imprisoned, by the sexual mores of free society. Grace knows herself to be an unreliable narrator, and part of the attraction of the book is ( Read more... )

A truly intriguing novel, folding together a sordid upper-class Canadian family history with pulp science fiction writing in the 1930s; layers of truth and fiction in the narrative which drew me in gradually and inexorably. Fascinating.

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