Reviews 

Contemporary with 'Thérèse Raquin', this is not that interesting. Set in French 19th century bourgeois society, a story of a rather dull...

I am reading these in chronological order as I find the complete works pretty un-navigable on my kindle. I have read this before, but...

Not a lot of humour or mirth in this. I enjoyed The Age of Innocence (593) and thought I would try another Wharton. Proved to be (by the...

I have tried (I don’t think successfully) to read this is the past, but it is brilliant. The themes are all Henry James, but the cultural...

I have never read this before and perhaps because I am not in a very receptive phase didn’t enjoy it, although struggled to understand...

Tried to read this, I think 5 years ago at Stuart’s in Spain, but gave up. These 19th century novels are incredibly long, but I got to...

Been meaning to read this for years, strange and paradoxically both difficult and easy to read. Very long and unfinished, in fact Gogol...

Triggered by 509; these Victorian (or maybe post in Hardy’s case) novelists are so prolix; 450 pages. The plot wasn’t that similar to...

I have never read this, and enjoyed it, perhaps, more than I expected. Eliot is a heavy themed writer, swinging between good quality...

Possibly her first (famous or actual first?) book. Good, but difficult and hard work. The main narrative is a Tristram Shandy like...

I gave up on this before even discovering what Tennyson’s Gift was. A tedious reconstruction of a (possible or actual, I never got that...

Very good book; ‘academic’ Lit Crit, but well written and argued. My problem was an ignorance of Jane Austen’s novels (which I must now...

These are big long books and it has taken a week to read each one. Guy Perron (Charles Dance on the TV) finally appears in this one and...

This is a lot easier than Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky; a quite light social comedy on the surface, although the central figure Bazarov...

I am not sure that (if ever) I have read this since 1976 (when it is signed as a Xmas present for P). It is quite hard going, but pretty...

I always try to take one big, difficult book on holiday, and am not a fan of Dickens, but persevere. Fairly typical of what I dislike...

Hadn’t read this before; quite hard work but interesting book, particularly given publication pre 1850. Maybe there were lots of similar...