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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A unique and wonderful literary treat, not to be missed!, August 5, 2009
As someone who reads to escape, to learn about my world and myself, and to find solitude without being alone, I've been hooked on Meg Rosoff's books since the apocalyptic "How I Live Now" was published in 2004. Whatever form of narrative voice she employs, Rosoff seems consistently able to convey a sense of intimacy with the reader. A disturbed teen discovering her own strength and capacity to love during crisis draws me close to her because of how she speaks: alternately with humor, vulnerability and passion. The Yeats-referencing centenarian who channels his 16-year old self in narrating Rosoff's 2007 novel, "What I Was," appears, against odds, clued in to the workings of my own psyche as he tells his story and dispenses his wisdom. While Rosoff is above all a gorgeous writer, funny, tender and surprising, her books have this added power because she is so emotionally honest. Rosoff is drawn to the outcast, those who are displaced in society or family, and her stories should resonate with any sensitive reader. Her characters play out their internal struggles against stark exterior landscapes that hint of the sublime - "great rolling swards of chalk grassland...skies dotted with hobby and merlin." ("The Bride's Farewell")
"The Bride's Farewell" offers up another non-conforming protagonist and my favorite yet, Pell Ridley, in an epoch-defying romance that happens to be set in 19th century England. Pell jilts her fiancé on the eve of their wedding, leaving home with just her horse and a mute younger brother who refuses to stay behind. Heading for a horse fair in Salisbury, "less a plan than a starting point," she meets a series of strangers who help determine the course of her journey. The story weaves back and forth between Pell's dismal upbringing and her flight from home, ever mindful of the interplay between fate and free will, a repeated theme of the author explored fancifully in her 2006 novel, "Just in Case." Animals are always significant in Rosoff's books, and when Pell first discovers the velocity of her beloved horse while training him it's a horse-as-metaphor clue that she has the requisite courage to strike out for an unknown destiny: "For those poor souls who can only think of the terrible fear and danger of a runaway horse, think of this: a speed like water flowing over stone, a skimming sensation that hovers and dips while the world spins round and the wind drags your skin taut across your bones. You can close your eyes and lose yourself in the rhythm, because nothing you do or shout or wish for will happen until the running makes up its mind to stop."
In a single, understated passage, "The Bride's Farewell" contains one of the most romantic moments in a novel that I've read in years. But ultimately it's a book about family - the one Pell leaves, the one she finds, and the one she finds again.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pell mell, August 5, 2009
In an enchanting tale of a hard won and unique "happily ever after", Meg Rosoff creates Pell, a young woman so determined not to follow the path most taken and dreamed of by girls her age, that she does the unthinkable, on what should be the happiest day of her life. But her dream to return to the freedom she knew as a girl riding swiftly on her beloved horse is immediately derailed by the reality of life as a young woman traveling alone in a desperate world. Complete with deception by friend and foe alike, desperation, and determination beyond possibility, Pell's story sweeps you along...rooting for her, aching with her, and, ultimately, admiring her as she lets go of much of what she knows and loves, and forges a future different from what she envisioned, but welcoming in its own right. Pell's story is a beautiful tale to be enjoyed not only for its richness of language but for its embrace of the possible. My daughter and I enjoyed it immensely!
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This One Suprised Me!, July 16, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
When I received The Brides Farewell by Meg Rossoff, I was quite doubtful. I am a huge lover of historical fiction and there is nothing more enticing to me than a big fat historical novel. This book is not big in stature, but it's big in story! I loved it!
Pell Ridley is teen girl living in 1850's England. On the day of her marriage to her long time friend, she runs off, leaving him at the alter. She becomes a teenage runaway bride. She does not want to a burdened wife, with too many children and an unfaithful husband. Can Pell make it work on her own? Can she find her independence in a time when women are not allowed to do so? Can she resist the temptation of returning to her childhood home and succumb to the life she has always feared?
I would recommend this book to anyone who loves historical fiction and romance.
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