By Taylor Jasmine | On May 25, 2016 | Updated September 30, 2022 | Comments (0)
The Tenth Month by Laura Z. Hobson is a 1970 novel telling the story of a single woman who, believing herself to be unable to conceive, becomes pregnant. The story mirrors some elements of the author’s own life as single mother by choice.
In 1937 Laura adopted a son, who she named Michael Z. Hobson. This was quite unusual for an unmarried woman at that time. In 1941 she gave birth to another son, who she named Christopher Z. Hobson.
Not wanting Michael to feel stigmatized as the adopted child of the family, she kept her pregnancy secret, giving birth under an assumed name so she could then adopt Christopher using her own name. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On May 16, 2016 | Updated September 30, 2022 | Comments (0)
When The Birds Fall Down by Dame Rebecca West was first published in 1966, it was hailed as a novel of great ambition that rose above the genre of spy fiction. The story was inspired by a true story she heard in her youth, told by fellow author Ford Maddox Ford, whose sister married a Russian refugee.
From the first pages, intrigue sets the tone, as West’s skillful prose urges the reader to turn the pages of this ponderous novel set against a backdrop of the Russian Revolution. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On May 9, 2016 | Updated January 14, 2025 | Comments (0)
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (1885 – 1962) is the Danish-born author’s 1937 memoir of her years in Africa from 1914 to 1931. There she owned a 4,000-acre coffee plantation in the hills outside of Nairobi, Kenya.
Born Karen Dinesen, she had come to Kenya from Denmark with her husband, Baron Bror Fredrik von Blixen-Finecke. When they separated, she stayed on to manage the farm herself.
During those years she was frequently visited by her lover, the big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton. For his amusement, she would make up stories “like Scheherazade.” Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On May 3, 2016 | Updated September 30, 2022 | Comments (0)
From the 1970 Random House edition of Losing Battles by Eudora Welty: Losing Battles by Eudora Welty is a story of rural Mississippi in the 1930s that will immediately be recognized as a classic in the seriocomic tradition in American fiction.
On the hot, dry first Sunday of August, three generations of Granny Vaughn’s descendants gather at her home in celebration of her ninetieth birthday.
The action covers two days, but since many members of this enormous family are great tale-tellers, the reader experiences much of the past as well. Dialogue and action are often marvelously funny, wildly so at times, but underneath are serious, even somber tones. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On May 2, 2016 | Updated September 30, 2022 | Comments (0)
From the 1993 Viking edition of The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton: “Brave, lively, engaging,” said The New York Times Book Review of Edith Wharton’s classic novel The Buccaneers, left uncompleted at her death (finished by Marion Mainwaring).
Nan and Virginia St. George have the great good luck to be born beautiful and wealthy — the two qualities prized above all others in 1870s New York — but the insurmountably bad luck to come from “new money.”
Shunned by the snobbish guardians of Manhattan society, the lively girls still attract many admirers, but no offers of marriage from eligible men — the grail pursued discreetly but with single-minded intensity by all young women of polite birth (and their mothers). Read More→
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