After loving Charlotte Smith's 'Desmond', at first I was a little disappointed with this novel as it seems rather slow and repetitive by comparison, and the heroine, Monimia, is a bit insipid. However, about halfway through it becomes a lot more interesting, when the hero, Orlando, stops lingering a

An odd but interesting and very readable mixture of fable, social critique and novel of manners. The preface to this book tells us the author stretched it out because she needed the money, and it shows, because it does not really get going until well into the second half. This may explain why the fi

One of the books in Austen's world. Interesting for a variety of reasons.

As in the writer's previous books, so in this, the story revolves around a couple facing difficulties as many around them do not want them to be together and complete their happiness with marriage. Here, however, I think that the author goes one step further by deepening in the social conditions tha

It's more of a 2.5 star reads.
This book is like a swirl - part of it was so utterly boring and the other part was actually enjoying to consume. I believe the greatest problem of this novel is that it could have so easily been condensed, severely condensed. The ironic part is that the ending was the

It is a gruelingly long book at 533 pages of small print, and language that is very wordy and ornate. It was published in 1793, and it is a marvel really, both as social commentary and a demonstration of the manners and speech patterns of yesteryear. I loved saying these long and complex sentences a

The never ending story.

you could fill oceans with all the tears that were in this book

Smith's best novel, this novel has an astonishing breadth. A "condition of England" novel that is a forerunner of Mansfield Park, a comment on the French Revolution through Smith's depiction of the American Revolution, and a study of injustice, this is a very interesting novel that manages to integr