Customer Reviews

Melbury Square

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Melbury Square gives a wonderful look into the life of a wealthy young girl in the turn of the century and how her road of reality is at times paved with Criso. I've read it twice and I am sure I'll read it again. It is truely amazing!

I just read this book and am rather regretting it. I suppose the writing was better than the average romance novel, and there's something to be said for a book that sticks as unpleasantly in my mind as this one did--perhaps somewhat like how stepping on dog poop attests to its power over a person. I think the main problem was that I did not find the heroine, Maud Lucie, likable, particularly after the first section when the typical formula for romantic happiness goes astray.

This book follows the life of Maud from aged 17 to 82. She goes from ravishingly beautiful, lively, and full of dreams to a doddering, crusty old woman, poor, unloved, and half-sane, who gives away her last valuable possessions to a couple of unsympathetic crooks. It's nice to see a heroine with flaws, but there were just so many it depressed me. I also didn't like how characters were created, developed, and then suddenly dismissed from the pages, never to reappear--this happened with Maud's first love Guy, her lover Ninian, and her half-sister Evangeline.

Well, I'm rambling, so I will just say that this book left me feeling kind of disgruntled and unhappy, and with a sense that things were not complete. I don't understand how others could feel they learned a lesson about life from it because all I've learned is that I don't want to read anything else from this author.