By Taylor Jasmine | On February 21, 2016 | Updated March 15, 2026 | Comments (2)
From the 1941 John Day edition of Portrait of a Marriage by Pearl S. Buck. “Marriage is so profound an experience,” William Wrote to his grown daughter, “I should be sorry if you missed it. It takes place sometimes between two who are unsuited, but it is profound.”
Surely no two could have seemed less suited than he and Ruth — he a sensitive artist, son of a rich and proud family, widely traveled, cosmopolitan, and she the unlettered daughter daughter of a farmer. She could never come into his world, and he came into hers — giving up, for their deep love, his family and fame and almost all else he had known.
Yet at the end of nearly fifty years he could think, with gratitude to her, how rich his life had been, how little he had lost to gain happiness. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On December 30, 2015 | Updated September 26, 2022 | Comments (0)
From the 1975 Dodd, Mead edition: Hercule Poirot, one of Agatha Christie’s most enduring characters, made his debut in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920). More than a generation later, he meets his final challenge in Curtain, in which he confronts the most fiendishly clever murderer of his long career.
The little English Village of Styles St. Mary provides the setting for both adventures. In his first case, Poirot investigates the baffling death of the mistress of Styles Court, the great manor house. Her returns there for his last adventure, to find that in the years since the Great War, Styles Court has degenerated into a “guest house.” Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On December 16, 2015 | Updated March 15, 2026 | Comments (0)
From the 1957 John Day Company edition: Pearl S. Buck‘s Letter from Peking is a tender and suspenseful story of love in a world split apart, love struggling against the barriers of race, politics, distance, and misunderstanding. This time is modern, the setting Vermont, with flashbacks to China.
The protagonist, Elizabeth, as an American woman whose husband Gerald, half Chinese, has elected to stay in Peking under communism while she returns to live in America.
The counterpoint to their continuing love is the search of their quarter-Chinese son Rennie, who has just reached manhood, for a love that will yield happiness instead of the frustration his parents reaped. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On November 19, 2015 | Updated September 26, 2022 | Comments (0)
From the 1966 John Day edition: The Time is Noon by Pearl S. Buck is the richly hued portrait of a woman as a daughter, sister, wife, and mother. It is the story of Joan Richards in quest of herself as she grows into womanhood in an American town, between the two world wars.
As a girl she shields her individuality not only from the world but from herself, behind the protective walls of a mother’s love, of home and family. But the family slips away, first one, then another, and slowly Joan discovers that the walls of home are but a shell.
She seeks another haven in marriage, moving in with her husband Bart’s family, but this is more like a prison. She places her hopes in motherhood, but her child as the months pass becomes a riddle and then a source of grief. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On November 15, 2015 | Updated September 27, 2022 | Comments (0)
From the 1989 W.W. Norton edition of The Education of Harriet Hatfield by May Sarton: In this novel by Mary Sarton, Harriet Hatfield at sixty begins a new adventure. Her friend of thirty years has died and left her enough money to fund her dream of running a women’s bookstore.
But when Hatfield House: A Bookstore for Women opens in a blue-collar neighborhood near Boston, Harriet is bombarded by anonymous threats, and obscenities are written on the windows.
Then a Boston Globe reporter headlines her interview, “Lesbian Bookstore Owner Threatened” and the education of Harriet begins. Never before has she thought of herself as a member of a persecuted minority. Read More→
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