Customer Reviews

The Street of Seven Stars

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

 

 

This is the story of a young, female, musician (probably circa early 1900's) who is living in Europe. It is well written (as usual, for MRR), the plot is interesting, and the characters are engaging. Not a mystery, but one of my favorites. I recommend it!

This book was a very interesting and engaging story! It was one of those that you start reading slower as you get to the end, just so it will last longer! Also a fascinating insight into social mores of an earlier time.

This book was a delightful romance, and a vast departure from what modern publishers put out there under that genre. True romance is less anatomical and more in the heart, mind and emotions. This story has true romance. Harmony, a beautiful, young American violinist studying in Vienna in the early 1900's is adrift and almost penniless when she meets Peter, an American doctor studying in Vienna to become a surgeon. Each following their separate dream, they find a way to survive by pooling their resources and meet some facinating characters along the way. There is Anna, the middle-aged, spinster doctor who has given up on her dream of a husband and children; Stewart, a handsome medical student who exploits women for his own comfort and convenience, until a chance meeting high in the Alps upsets all his plans; Marie, a sad little member of the demi-monde, who makes the mistake of falling in love; a dying child; a Bosnian spy, and others. The characters are drawn with depth, sympathy and some become old friends. Solid writing, good pacing, and a large step above many novels of the time. I enjoyed it very much.

Atypical of Mary Roberts Rinehart's books, this is not a mystery. It's a slice of life among young Americans in Vienna just before the Great War. And it's a love story very much of the period. Don't expect political correctness from this novel. It's an evocation of a bygone era. If you can accept that, you're in for a delightful read.

The story focuses on two idealistic young people. Thirty-year-old Doctor Peter Byrne is in Vienna to observe and practice surgical techniques he can't learn in Ohio. As a student-doctor, he exists on the edge of poverty. Beautiful young Harmony Wells is living on a shoestring to study the violin with a prestigious master. Both are in Vienna to win credentials that will ensure their success back in America. Neither can afford to fall in love or marry.

Various adventures befall them and their friends. Peter and Harmony are somewhat at war with convention, while retaining a proper Victorian purity of mind and body. I'm being vague so you can experience the story freshly. This edition has no introduction to give away the plot, so you're safe there too.

Rinehart indulges in an almost Dickensonian sentimentality in this novel, and she does it well. There are fun supporting characters, too, perhaps a bit exaggerated: among them, the arrogant Viennese music master, the softhearted sentry with one lung, the little lovesick Bulgarian spy and more than one truculent landlady.

Rinehart paints a vivid picture of the hardships of foreign lodgers living in tawdry rooms, collectively fed dreadful food. Rinehart herself was quite familiar with financial struggle. Her mother took in boarders to make ends meet, and money was always short.

I enjoyed this novel. Although shamelessly romantic and definitely dated, it's got "soul," as one kindly character remarked of the heroine.

I MADE IT THRU IT---I WILL SAY THAT MUCH.
IT WASN'T EASY---EXCITING WILL NOT BE USED BY THIS REVIEWER.
AS OPPOSED TO THE OTHER REVIEWERS---I READ FASTER TOWARD THE
END---JUST TO GET IT OVER WITH!!!

I am a fan of the Golden Age mysteries and regularly read Edmund Crispin, Patricia Wentworth, Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Dorothy Sayers, Gladys Mitchell and Rex Stout. I came upon this book thinking it was a mystery, but it is not. If you enjoyed "The Case Against Elinor Norton" you'll like this book. I found it failing in the same way- just too dated for me to read about a helpless female and how shes being destroyed by perceived or real relationships outside of marriage with men. For those who prefer a traditional cozy mystery, "The Yellow Room" is a better choice.