Weekly Reader: Julien's Terror by Laura Rahme; Gripping Historical Fiction Novel Explores Real and Supernatural Horrors of France's Reign of Terror

Weekly Reader: Julien's Terror by Laura Rahme; Gripping Historical Fiction Novel Explores Real and Supernatural Horrors of France's Reign of Terror

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: The period between 1789-1799 in France is among the most tumultuous times in World History. French government transformed from a monarchy, to a republic, to a dictatorship, to an empire over the course of ten years.

It's understandable that those times would have filled the people with plenty of stress, uncertainty, anxiety, and fear. People wondered if their closest friend during the Revolution would then denounce them to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. It was hard to trust or rely on anyone.

Laura Rahme's novel Julien's Terror explores that stressful frightening time. Like good historical fiction, she fills her book with plenty of details about the time from clothing and activities to key players like Maximilian Robespierre, the Dauphin Louis-Charles, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Francois de Charette. Rahme however does not give us a dry history. She gives us an interesting story with fascinating characters to go with this exciting detailed history.

The most intriguing characters are Julien and Marguerite D'Aureville, the protagonists. They are a married couple who are on opposite sides of the political spectrum and it doesn't take long for them to be at odds with each other.

Julien is the son of former Revolutionaries who protested the French monarchy and got swept up in the subsequent Reign of Terror. However, Julien's father also brings terror to his own home. He is an alcoholic who physically and mentally abuses his wife and son. He is so reprehensible that it is actually a relief when Julien uses some stolen anti-Revolutionary pamphlets placed in the right positions to have his father arrested. What saves this from being a completely reprehensible is Julien's age 9, that he is protecting himself and his mother, and that he only intended for his father to be arrested and removed from the family. When his father is guillotined, Julien is sickened with the carnage and filled with remorse.

Marguerite is also a victim of these brutal times. She is the daughter of Royalist sympathizers who are imprisoned then killed in the opening chapter. She is adopted by her uncle and sees battlefields up front as she and other Royalists march with Charette but many are wiped out. She is filled with such trauma from these times that she is troubled well into her adulthood.

When Julien and Marguerite marry, things try to become normal. Julien develops an engineering career. Marguerite adjusts to becoming a middle class wife and bickers with her domineering mother-in-law. The troubles from their childhood seem to be behind them. Then Napoleon takes power and things get worse.


Julian becomes obsessive and paranoid with Marguerite. While he is not physically abusive, Julien is verbally abusive towards her. He is highly suspicious of her former aristocratic life and her relationships with other men particularly Max Von Hauser, an Austrian man. Marguerite also has her own mysterious behavior as well. Julien's admiration of Napoleon Bonaparte causes her to avoid speaking with him about politics while keeping her former allegiances with Royalists. She also meets Max at a cafe in private who provides an understanding ear and more. Julien and Marguerite's marriage is an example of a self-fulfilled prophecy. Julien's coldness and jealous suspicions that Marguerite is having an affair causes her to confide in friendship with Max and that friendship develops into a potential romance.

Julien's Terror explores how the times shaped Julien and Marguerite and their marriage. Since, they were on opposite sides during the war of the Revolution, they cannot fully trust each other when there appears to be peace. While the Terror of the old days is still in their subconscious, it infiltrates into their lives giving them their own terrors.

What starts out as a straight forward historical fiction about the French Revolution, takes a very bizarre turn halfway through giving the novel a supernatural tone. Julien visits a fortune teller whose predictions are right on the nose. There is a creepy apparition of a young boy who frightens Julian that may be a ghost or may be a hallucination. Then there is Marguerite whose behavior gets progressively stranger. She takes on different voices, acts like she doesn't know Julien or anyone else, and sings vulgar songs she didn't know before. She also disappears for several weeks with no memory of where she went. Is she lying? Does she have Dissociative Identity Disorder or has she been possessed by spirits?

The supernatural aspects turn Julien's Terror into a different kind of book than it was before. At first glance, it appears abrupt but the more the Reader thinks about it the more it makes sense. The magical aspects are given more realistic possibilities like they could be products of their insanity or repressed guilt and memories of what had gone on before.
The bigger possibility is that in the world of Julian's Terror, the disruption in the political and social world of the Revolution and Reign of Terror brought the disruptions in the spiritual world. The ghosts and possessions are  symbols of the horror that happened before and still occurs within a country that has not recovered and whose people continue to suffer.

Laura Rahme's book focuses on the terror that comes from a country in great political strife and from the people who lived during it and afterwards.

Classics Corner: Fear of Flying by Erica Jong; Frank and Funny Feminist Novel from the 1970’s about Liberation, Sexual and Otherwise

Classics Corner: Fear of Flying by Erica Jong; Frank and Funny Feminist Novel from the 1970’s about Liberation, Sexual and Otherwise

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: I would like to give an advanced warning that this review will contain strong language which may be offensive to some Readers. Normally, I try to avoid such words but it's difficult with this book considering how prominent the terms are. Read at your own discretion.

It's difficult to imagine now how much of an impact that Erica Jong's Fear of Flying had on the public consciousness when it was first published in 1973. Based on Jong's experiences with her first two marriages, the book was published during the Second Wave of American Feminism and was loathed and lauded by critics and readers alike. Many found it vulgar and offensive and criticized its stance on marriage. Others found it refreshing that a woman could write so honestly about marriage and sexuality. It's legacy was assisted by prominent authors like John Updike and Henry Miller writing essays praising Jolng's work. Miller even compared Fear of Flying to his own landmark work calling it the female version of Tropic of Cancer.

After 46 years, Fear of Flying deserves that praise and more. It's a frank and funny book that is brutally honest and biting about a woman's marriage and her desire to break free from it.

Isadora Wing, the novel's protagonist, is accompanying her husband Bennett to a psychoanalyst's convention in Vienna. Observing that the flight includes Bennett's fellow convention goers, Isadora wittily realizes that she had been treated by most of the analysts including the one she is married to.

Isadora appears happy or at least settled in her second marriage and considering her first marriage was to an unstable man who was under the delusion that he was Jesus Christ at least her marriage to Bennett is uneventful. But inside, Isadora is unfulfilled and bored.

Isadora longs for what she terms “the zipless fuck.” A “zipless fuck” is an affair based on sex and nothing else. You're in and out quickly. There are no strings attached and no remorse. It is simply a means to relieve hidden lust, sexual frustration, and desires.

While at the convention, she finds her potential “zipless fuck” in another psychoanalyst, Adrian Goodlove. Unfortunately as the two begin to fancy each other, Isadora realizes the reality of her fantasy is not at all zipless. The affair goes on longer than she expected and she joins Adrian on a road trip through Europe at the cost of her marriage, a marriage that she is not sure that she wants.

Isadora's narration is filled with dry sarcastic remarks and one-liners turning her into the Dorothy Parker of the Me Decade. She has a rejoinder about everything even the darkest subjects. She lived in Heidelberg, Germany with Bennett for a time and felt out of place as an American Jewish woman living in Germany less than 20 years after WWII ended. (“Germany was like a stepmother: utterly familiar, utterly despised. More despised in fact for being so familiar.”) Isadora is constantly at odds with her mother, Jude, who blames her marriage and giving birth to four daughters for ending her artistic career and warns Isadora that she has to choose to either be an artist or have children. (“With a name like Isadora Zelda it was clear what I was supposed to choose: everything my mother had been offered and given.up.”) Isadora studies English Literature earning a fellowship but finds it unable to hold her interest particularly as she reads the various analyses of Tom Jones. (“I had gone to graduate school because I love literature, but in graduate school you were not supposed to study literature. You were supposed to study criticism.”)

Even the men in her life are no match for Isadora's sharp wit. After the difficulties of her first marriage, Isadora is drawn to Bennet's silent steadiness which proves to be a burden. (“At what point had I started to pretend that Bennett was somebody else? Somewhere around the end of the third year of our marriage. And why? Nobody had been able to tell me that.”) When doodling variations of her name with Adrian's such as Isadora Wing-Goodlove, M.B.E. she cheekily tries to make her vision of a third marriage different from her previous one, even if it is to another analyst. She begins a facetious invitation to a housewarming party but adds at the bottom “bring your own hallucinogens.”

These one-liners and wit while funny are also seen as a defense mechanism. They are Isadora's way of understanding the tangled relationships around her and help her make sense of the world.

As Isadora plunges headlong into her journey with Adrian, she alternates between having sex with him, trying to avoid difficult conversations about the future, and recalling events from her past. The flashback chapters are key as we understand how they shaped Isadora to the choices that she made. Besides her depressed mother, Isadora also has strained relationships with her three sisters each of whom made seemingly rebellious choices for husbands: Randy the oldest marries Pierre, a Lebanese businessman and gives birth to nine children. Lalah, her younger sister marries Robert, an African-American doctor and gives birth to quintuplets. Chloe, the youngest, marries Abel, an Israeli businessman and gives birth to one child. Isadora watches bemused as each of her sisters once unconventional settle into conformist marriages and motherhood and keep badgering her to give up her poetic ambitions and have children. (“Why must marriage always include children?” Isadora wonders)

Isadora gets a close up taste of her sister's brands of married life when she, Lalah, and Chloe visit Randy and Pierre at their home in Beirut. Pierre then attempts to rape Isadora who is disgusted by the thought of committing incest with her brother-in-law and is even more startled by Lalah and Chloe giggling about the whole thing. This moment opens her eyes about the hypocrisy with married couples particularly her sisters who live contented lives on the outside but are depraved and hypocritical on the inside.

Isadora's first marriage also provides necessary explanation for why she is so miserable in the present. Brian Stollerman is at first a brilliant eloquent man who is knowledgeable in everything from Medieval literature, Shakespeare's plays, to old gangster films. Isadora admits that “(they) blew it by getting married” as he pressured her to marry him or he would leave her. Brian's terrifying delusions begin to take hold as he keeps Isadora up all night with disconnected ramblings and questions about her religious beliefs and the Second Coming. When he believes that he is Jesus Christ, Isadora is so beaten down by his mental illness that she is unable to fight his abuse towards her. She surrenders custody of him to his parents with whom she does not get along and his institutionalization. It's no wonder that she then settles into the quiet of her marriage to Bennett Wing, considering an analyst a safe release after a mentally ill man.

Even Isadora's marriage to Bennett and her affair with Adrian are not without their struggles. While Bennett is not a cruel man, he does not fully understand or appreciate Isadora behaving less like a husband and equal and more like a mentor or father figure. He treats Isadora like a project always trying to analyze and place her in a little confined box. What was once a reprieve from the conformity of her family and the insanity of her first marriage, becomes suffocating as Isadora is afraid of losing herself to the ennui of married life.

Instead of Adrian being the release that she hoped for, he turns out to be more of the same. He claims to be a Nihilist but is actually using his beliefs as an excuse to be a controlling manipulator. He nags Isadora to leave Bennett and live freely with him yet does not cut himself off from his wife and children. When they finally end their relationship, Adrian abandons her in Paris. Instead of being zipless, Isadora just gets fucked.

However, when she's alone, Isadora finally comes to terms with what she has wanted all along. She wasn't looking for a casual sexual affair, or a third marriage. She was looking for a way to be herself. She was trying to liberate and free herself from the expectations set by her family, husbands, and Adrian and she does it.

The title comes from the opening chapter when Isadora admits that she has aviophobia, which is a fear of flying in airplanes. As the book continues, it is apparent that Isadora is afraid of flying away from the standards that she had placed on herself. Though she always questioned and ridiculed those standards, she never had the courage to separate herself from them. The book ends when she finally finds the courage to be herself and fly.

Weekly Reader: Emmie of Indianapolis by Kay Castaneda; Brilliant Slice of Life Stories Detail A Girl's Coming of Age in Indianapolis

Weekly Reader: Emmie of Indianapolis by Kay Castaneda; Brilliant Slice of Life Stories Detail A Girl's Coming of Age in Indianapolis

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: Kay Castaneda's Emmie of Indianapolis is one of those coming of age books that take various moments in the young protagonist's life to depict their developing maturity. Emmie of Indianapolis takes that standard and does it well.

12 year old, Emmie's mother announces that she is divorcing her father and moving to Indianapolis with Emmie and her younger sisters, Jennie and Cassie. Understandable but difficult today, rare and even more difficult in 1963.

Emmie and her family have to adjust to moving to a small apartment above a tavern where their mother works. There are some tense moments as the girls have to deal with some pretty tense situations such as a pedophile visitor entering their apartment to be stopped by a neighbor, a disgusting landlord nicknamed “Ogre”, and their mother's slow descent into alcoholism.

Emmie befriends Joey, an African-American boy, George, a Chinese boy, and Polly, a Romanian Gypsy girl. Emmie encounters racism as her new friends are bullied by other kids in school. When Emmie defends her friends, she is ostracized because of her friendship with them and also because of her family's Catholic religion contrasting with the mostly Protestant student body.


While there are hardships in the book, Emmie of Indianapolis also has plenty of sweet engaging moments to spare. Many of them involve Emmie, her sisters, and friends exploring her new city. Many of the streets and landmarks like Monument Circle, are accurately described and the kids have fun shopping and sightseeing.

They also are able to one up their bullies by their scholarly efforts. They participate in a Spelling Bee and it's a genuine victory when George wins to the pride of his friends and parents. Emmie and her friends really shine in these moments.

Emmie's parents shine in their moments with Emmie and her sisters. The reasons for their divorce is never explained but they clearly love their daughters. The secret is that they are flawed but not irredeemable. Emmie's father takes them on weekend visits and is there during an emergency. While her mother is beginning an alcohol dependency that is noticeable when Emmie withdraws from uncomfortable with conversations about alcohol, her mother is still written as a kind loving woman. She cares for the girls and wants to protect them from danger. The alcohol may just be a sign that she is overwhelmed.

Besides finding strength in her friends and family, Emmie finds strength in her Catholic faith. When they arrive in Indianapolis, Emmie looks for a Catholic Church and is pleased when she finally finds it. She uses her knowledge in religion to serve others like her friends and feels a spiritual presence during times of stress. It makes sense that Emmie wants to become a teacher or a nun so she can serve others as an adult.

Emmie of Indianapolis is a charming slice of life with plenty of darkness but plenty of sweetness to spare.

Weekly Reader: Greenspell: A Fantasy Anthology by Kathy Ann Trueman; A Brilliant Anthology of Lovely Fantasy Stories About Female Magic Users

Weekly Reader: Greenspell: A Fantasy Anthology by Kathy Ann Trueman; A Brilliant Anthology of Lovely Fantasy Stories About Female Magic Users

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


Spoilers: There is a new name in epic fantasy literature and that name is Kathy Ann Trueman. Last year, Trueman's book Stories of the Vale: Path of the Dragonfly was a strong character driven look at epic fantasy tropes such as feudal lords, magical creatures, spells, and adventurous quests. Another book, Greenspell is an anthology though not as epic in scope or plot is still rich in character and magical detail.


A common thread in all the stories is that the protagonists are all female and the majority are magic users of some kind. While there are some feminist moments in the stories that explore the solidarity and companionship of sisterhood and features female characters challenging many fantasy tropes by being active leaders, the stories aren't political so much as they are fantasy stories in which the lead characters happen to be female.

Magic is a huge presence in the stories in which characters use magic for different means some in defense and protection of others and some for greed or vengeance. There is no definite good vs. evil black vs. white magic set up. Instead some character's fates are sealed by the choices they make without any moral philosophy thrown at the Reader.


Greenspell is a very short anthology, only five stories but they are all good. The stories are:


“The Sow's Ear”- This story was also featured in Marian Zimmer Bradley's Swords and Sorcery anthology. If Rod Serling and George R.R. Martin ever collaborated on a fantasy driven episode of the Twilight Zone, this would be it. (Actually George R.R. Martin did write some episodes of the 1980’s Twilight Zone series so I'm not too far off.)
This story follows the theme of “Be Careful What You Wish For” to a clever conclusion. Janell, a sorceress is hired to aid a woman who was once young and beautiful and wants her original appearance back.
The plot turns on a few twists as Janell realizes too late that the woman is not what she appears and Janell is trapped inside a curse that is unique and continues the story's meaning of appearance concealing the true nature.

“Thief from Thief”-This sequel to “A Sow's Ear” has both drama and humor. Janell is still punished by the previous story's curse. Trueman devotes many paragraphs describing Janell's three year torment in an extremely small confinement well. Janell is driven to near insanity trying to find a way out of her imprisonment as well as the boredom of such a small area. While she never ages (because it's a magic curse), she is aware the world has changed around her and can't be a part of it.
Her enemy, also a carry over from the previous story, is good at psychological torture as well often giving Janell just enough of a glimpse of the outside world to let her know what she is missing and creating illusion spells so if a wayward knight or wanderer enters their lair, it mistakes Janell for a rock formation and goes on their way.
Humor is found as Janell finds a thief who could rescue her. She weaves a spell to end the illusion on her so he could see it. She uses various magic to get his attention just about doing anything but holding up a large neon sign that says “I'm down here, Idiot!”
Keeping her magical knowledge and cleverness in soliciting the thief's help, Janell manages to break free from her enemy and the curse.

“Friends in Spite”- I hate vampire books and stories. Anne Rice's Lester books are overrated. I found Dracula to be less a brooding tortured soul than a creepy perverted rapist. Don't get me started on Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel. In fact I will go out on a limb and say the only literary vampire that I can for sure say I like is C.D. Bitesky of Mel Gilden's Fifth Grade Monsters. The reason that I am saying this is I want the Reader to understand the full scope of my meaning when I say “Friends in Spite” is my favorite short story in this anthology despite or because the main character is a vampire sorceress.
Elianne, the aforementioned vampire/sorceress and her friend, Trevia, a swordswoman are in a village in which two people are attacked mysteriously. Elianne sees the lack of blood in the bodies and knows the killer was like her: another vampire.
There are some clichéd moments such as Elianne turning into a bat and having the urge to levitate (even vampires that cross genres have standards to uphold). But thankfully not many.
There are genuine moments of horror and graphic violence. The vampire killer not only kills it's victims and takes their blood but it mutilates them so people think it was murdered by a wild animal. To find the vampire, Elianne casts a spell that makes all vampires including herself lust and hunger for blood. These moments give the story genuine horror.
Elianne and Trevia's friendship is the true heart of this story as they are able to complete each other with Elianne's knowledge of magic and vampires combined with Trevia's swordplay and muscle. Through her friendship and trust in Trevia, Elianne reveals vital information on how to kill the vampire and is able to combat her spell cast blood lust for Trevia. While it is a story of strong fantasy and horror, it is the friendship between Elianne and Trevia that is the real core of “Friends in Spite.”

“Just Until Sun-Up”- Another friendship story between a magic user and non-magic user though this one favors humor rather than horror.
Neikei, a witch and Karra, a minstrel/juggler's horses and gear have been stolen by a group of thieves… and that's it. That's the plot. It focuses mostly on the theft and the duo trying to get their stuff back.
While not long on plot, the story features some byplay and one-liners as Neikei and Karra go after the thieves. (When Neikei reminds Karra that her spells are to protect her person not her possessions, Karra sarcastically remarks “Oh and if the thieves had tried to take you, that would be different.”) Karra's sardonic anxiety plays off Neikei's calm rationality rather well as the two act like a comedy team, the Female Fantasy Answers to Abbott and Costello or Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in the Road To… movies. (Road to King's Landing.)
Though unlike the other comedy teams Neikei has some magical ways of defeating their antagonists whivh she shows Karra in a way that gets their horses back and dispenses justice in a hilarious and original manner.


“The Sun God's Reading”- Similar to “A Sow's Ear” this one also plays on “Be Careful What You Wish For” but in a less vindictive manner. This focuses on the idea of aspiring to reach a certain goal but once it is met evaluating whether one is able to achieve that greatness ever again.
Yula, Gunnie, and the Narrator attend a school in which the students develop their talents and

connections with the Gods. Brilliantly, the story makes no distinction between the various pantheons as Odin, the Norse God of Wisdom pals around with Apollo, Greco-Roman Sun God.
The three students are granted one wish at the end of the year.(“Nothing frivolous like world peace,” The Narrator tells us.) and only one will be granted. The Narrator wants a lute made of gold. Gunnie wants a ship to sail the seas and Yula wants to meet Apollo and to have him read one of her poems.
Despite the mystical setting, there is a contemporary theme to this story of goal setting and being ready to meet those goals and move on once they are met. The three students are very capable in their studies of music, maritime travel, and poetry but they are filled with self-doubt and worry about their studies and whether they are really good in their chosen fields.
Once the wish is granted, the students go through transitions which are true to life as well. Two continue with their studies even getting their wishes granted on their own. The other abandons them feeling that she will never be as good as she was then. Instead she settles into a different life with a husband, children, and a job which is tied to her earlier ambitions but isn't as fulfilling. These divergent paths the student take is similar to the many graduates who peak at young ages. Some continue down their paths to their brand of success. Others end up elsewhere that while not necessarily bad was not what they envisioned.

Greenspell is a great example of how fantasy authors can create magic, 

believable  characters, and built worlds in a few short pages just as well as they can through a novel or a series. Trueman excels at both: the long and the short of fantasy.

Women's History Month Classics Corner: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton; Edith Wharton's Savage and Sharp Exposure of Gilded Age New York

Women’s History Month Classics Corner: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton; Edith Wharton's Savage and Sharp Exposure of Gilded Age New York

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: Sometimes a writer has to live within the world they write about to really understand it. They give the Readers an Inside Outsider's Perspective because they know that world and how the people within it think and operate. No one understood that concept more than Edith Wharton (1862-1937). The world that she lived in and wrote about was late 19th-early 20th century Upperclass New York society, the Gilded Age.

Similar to F. Scott Fitzgerald, a later author who also wrote about elite New Yorkers, Wharton viewed the behaviors of the people around her with a detachment, cynicism, and irony that showed outsiders that all was not pleasant inside these palatial homes, designer dresses, expensive jewelry, and marriages of wealth and convenience. This was a place that Wharton knew all too well.


Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones, the last of three children, to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, a well-to-do New York City couple. (Reportedly her father's family was so well known for their affluence, that they actually inspired the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses.”) Her family traveled a great deal so Wharton studied many languages and read voraciously. (Though her mother forbade her from reading novels until she was an adult.)

Wharton's relationship with her parents was fractured. Her father was frequently away from the house and Edith almost never saw him. Her mother was critical especially when she started writing. An anecdote displaying her mother's cold nature is told: Edith presented her first novel to her mother when she was eleven. When she read a description in which the main character had to tidy up a drawing room before a guest's arrival, Mom simply said “Drawing rooms are always tidy” and returned the book to her. Dismayed, Edith wrote poetry until she was 15 and had her first work published, a translation of a German poem. Instead of bursting with pride, Edith's mother wanted her daughter's name removed considering a career as an author unsuitable for a girl of Edith's standards.


While Wharton was climbing towards a literary career, she had her debutante season. She married Edward “Teddy” Robbins Wharton, a Boston socialite in 1885. While he was from the same class, the marriage was extremely unhappy. Teddy was bipolar and was prone to rages, jealous tirades, and spending and behaving recklessly. When Teddy was at his worst in 1908, Wharton began an affair with Morton Fullerton, a journalist who was her intellectual equal. Teddy worsened until his disorder was declared incurable and Wharton divorced him in 1913.

Wharton traveled extensively and after her divorce settled in France. When WWI broke out, she became involved in relief efforts and was ultimately awarded the Legion D'Honneur.

Wharton was a prolific writer writing 85 short stories, 11 non-fiction books mostly on her travels, several poems, and 18 novels (Her first novel published when she was 40.) In 1921, she won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her book The Age of Innocence, becoming the first women to do so. Two years later, Willa Cather would replicate that feat with her book One of Ours.

Many of Wharton's novels feature rich characters in fancy homes and outsiders trying to find their way inside that rich life with the swells trying to keep them out. The Custom of the Country features a woman scheming her way into advantageous marriages and leaving a few bodies in her wake. Another novel, The Buccaneers concerns a group of American wealthy women who marry English aristocrats so the guys can get their fortune and the girls can get titles. (Think of it as Downton Abbey: The Early Years). Her Pulitzer winning novel The Age of Innocence explores an American upperclassman's scandalous romance with a countess who has been exiled from New York society because of her divorce. Then there's my favorite of Wharton's novels, her first, The House of Mirth. All of them feature characters who scheme, plot, bicker, and would gladly sell their mothers, children, and souls for a chance at the high life.

The House of Mirth is about a character like that: Lily Bart, a young woman who dreams of a life in high society but her attempts ultimately bring about her decline and self-destruction. It's interesting that I am reading The House of Mirth at the same time that I am reading Middlemarch and contrasting how different the protagonists are over money and their status as women. Dorothea Brooke maybe from a wealthy family but she is rebelling from it towards a life of meaning and service. Lily Bart longs to retreat into the life that she was reared for. Lily longs to be what Dorothea fought against: a decorative set piece for a rich man to marry. The House of Mirth is almost Middlemarch if Rosamond Vincy were the main character, albeit a more interesting multi-faceted Rosamond Vincy but still she and Lily Bart would have a lot in common.

Lily is the type of woman who was brought up for only two purposes: be beautiful and marry wealth. She has been aware of this fact ever since she was a child and saw her father lose his wealth partly because of her mother's frivolous spending. She hardly ever saw her father because he worked to get their fortune back and her mother was cold and unemotional (shades of Wharton's own upbringing). After her parent's deaths, she ended up in the care of a wealthy aunt, Julia Peniston who financially supports Lily but the two don't care to be around each other.

Lily is constantly aware that her life is one where she is held under scrutiny and her every movement is judged. Even when she sees a male friend alone in his hotel room, she has to invent a lie to an acquaintance rather than let any suspicion get out. This behavior leaves her to wonder “Why must a girl pay so dearly for her latest escape from routine? Why could one never do a natural thing without screening it behind a screen of artifice?”

Lily is aware that her upbringing leaves her no opportunities except to be a rich man's wife and at the age of 29, she is running out of time. She is anxious over how others perceive her so much that it becomes a central focus of her life. With good reason too as her every step is monitored by people whose malicious gossip can destroy faster than any conventional weapon.

One near engagement with a boring rich man, Percy Gryce, ends after he becomes aware of Lily's penchant for gambling by playing bridge and her presumed flirtations with men. He instead marries a dull homebody socialite with no past and not much of a personality.

Lily's gambling puts her so far in debt that a crooked financier, Gus Trenor, offers to pay off her debt- for a horizontal price. While she refuses, plenty of people have seen them together in public enough for rumors to spread and reach the ears of Trevor's wife, Judy who is Lily's best friend. Lily not only loses a potential husband but a close friendship as well.

A common theme in The House of Mirth is the double standards between the have and have-nots. Someone like Lily who is struggling to be accepted could have a ruined reputation if it even appears that she had stepped one toe out of line. However, the wealthy elite can behave however they want in their inner circle with minimal repercussions. Carry Fisher, a divorcee, lives as freely as she chooses and while is the source of much derision, she is able to laugh it off and live life according to her terms. Surprisingly, Carry is also one of the few genuinely kind honest characters in the book by drawing in new people that are on the fringes of society like the nouveau riche Wellington Brys and Simon Rosedale, a Jewish businessman trying to climb the ladder of wealth. Carry is also one of the few people that still gives Lily a warm reception after she is ostracized because of scandal.

Another person who is Teflon to gossip is Bertha Dorset, a bitchy socialite whom Lily tries to befriend but ends up becoming her nemesis. Bertha is the Queen Bee of New York's social set, the In Crowd Cheerleader/Female Bully all grown up. She has multiple affairs on her clueless husband, George and is skillful at covering them up. When Lily is unable to distract George long enough during a disastrous cruise to the Mediterranean, Bertha deflects the situation by accusing Lily of having an affair with her husband so no one will know Bertha was having an affair with her own lover, Ned Silverton.

Bertha's acknowledgement of Lily's ostracism leads to various ripples that cause Lily's final exile from the society she longed to be a part of. Even her aunt disinherits her in her will leaving Lily destitute working as a social secretary and later for a milliner.

At no point is Lily portrayed as a shallow superficial one-dimensional character. True she has her hang ups about clothes, fancy homes, and being part of the high society set. But she is fully aware that is all she is meant to be. Her background gives her very few alternatives to seek happiness beyond marrying wealth. She isn't like Dorothea Brooke who had the intelligence and drive but was born in the wrong time to use them. All Lily has is to be the Trophy Wife of a rich man and when that is taken from her, she has nothing to fall back on.

Lily questions her status quite often and wishes that she could be free to marry for love. Nowhere is this more evident than in her relationship with Lawrence Seldon, a lawyer who though has many wealthy friends is not himself rich. He pursues Lily for a time clearly in love with her, but Lily regrettably breaks him off because she needs to marry money.

She can't marry for love without financial security because she doesn't know how to do it. After Lawrence is convinced the rumors about her with other men are true and he temporarily leaves her, she is filled with genuine regret that she ended what could have been a good relationship.

Lily also shows a great deal of integrity. When a former servant and Rosedale use letters that expose a former affair between Lawrence and surprise surprise Bertha (another reason why Lily is on Bertha's “People to See Lives to Ruin” List) as potential blackmail, Lily refuses to do so.

She is too honest for the society that she wants to join and eventually abandons her. This abandonment ultimately leads to the end where Lily is left alone with only her regrets and a bottle of chloral hydrate.

The House of Mirth allowed Edith Wharton to expose the world in which she was raised for the cold, superficial, unfeeling world that it was. She revealed the people on the fringes were swallowed whole by the callous and malicious people on the inside. If they couldn't join, they would be trampled underneath and Lily Bart was.

Women's History Month Classics Corner: Middlemarch by George Eliot; George Eliot's Magnum Opus About the Reality of Dashed Dreams and Unhappy Marriages

Women’s History Month Classics Corner: Middlemarch by George Eliot; George Eliot's Magnum Opus About the Reality of Dashed Dreams and Unhappy Marriages

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


Spoilers: I admit I enjoy reading George Eliot after Jane Austen.

If Austen's novels are the frilly romantic girl who gushes over love songs and poems, dreams of Prince Charming (or Mr. Darcy), and wonders why life isn't a rom com, then Eliot's novels would be her prickly older bookworm sister who reminds her about the divorce statistics, is concerned with world issues, and maybe finds a partner but usually while she is building her career or becoming involved in social causes.

That being said, I like George Eliot better. One of my all-time favorite novels by her is undoubtedly her greatest work, her Magnum Opus, Middlemarch. Contrasted with other books written by women at the time, Middlemarch isn't overly concerned with romance. Romance is in it sure, but that isn't the main focus. The focus instead is on unhappy marriages, socioeconomic struggles, academic research, political reform and how various characters of different roles of society get along with each other.

To begin with, let's talk about Middlemarch's author herself, George Eliot (1819-1880).

George Eliot, born Mary Anne Evans, was the fifth child of Robert and Christina Evans. Robert was the manager of an estate. It was at the estate's vast library where Evans, a voracious reader, studied Classics and various languages which would have been forbidden for a girl in her time period. Evans had little formal education and was mostly self-taught by this reading.

While Evans was raised in an Anglican household, beginning in her late teens she made friends with various agnostic freethinkers. She began to question her religion putting herself at odds with her father. She also had arguments with her brothers who received the formal education that she had been deprived of because of her gender. Her animosity towards her brothers may have been the inspiration for her novel, The Mill on the Floss which concerns the rivalry between the cruel, Tom Tulliver and his bookish sister, Maggie.

After her father died, Evans visited Geneva and embarked on a writing career in which she chose the name George Eliot. She chose the pseudonym because of her concerns that she would not be taken seriously as a female author and she wanted to maintain anonymity. Eliot produced several essays, translations, various short stories and poems, and 7 novels. Her novels concerned themselves with social issues, religion, class conflicts, Antisemitism, and gender roles things women normally did not write about at the time.

Besides her writing career, Eliot's personal life was a rebellious one as well. She embarked on an over 20 affair with George Henry Lewes, a married editor. Despite his unhappy marriage and his closeness to Eliot, Lewes did not divorce his wife. Nonetheless, he and Eliot were together until his death in 1870 making the two the subject of much scandal and innuendo.

After Lewes's death, Eliot married the much younger, John Cross. However Cross was deeply troubled and attempted to jump from their hotel to the Grand Canal in Rome while on their honeymoon. He survived but the two returned to England where Eliot died of throat infection and kidney disease in 1870.

Eliot’s life is one of a woman who struggled to find her place in the world and rebelled against the constraints of society’s standards towards women. She was able to take charge of her life and be her own person which is what makes Middlemarch so fascinating.

While Eliot was a rebel to the end, her characters try to be. They try to be more than what 19th century rural England expects from them. The most iconoclastic characters are the two leads: Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate.

Dorothea in particular has an uphill battle becoming her own person. She is one of two sisters who are adopted by their uncle Arthur Brooke. Instead of looking forward to marriage and gushing over pretty jewelry as her sister, Celia does, Dorothea is a well-read intellectual woman who dreams of a life of meaning.
She  wants a life of study and active service to the poor. She designs cottages on her uncle's estate so the poor workers can have better equipped, safer, affordable, and comfortable homes. She reads great works and longs to have someone with which to discuss them.

Dorothea feels stifled by the society around her and is often ridiculed for her plainness and her ambitions. Even her sister is confused by her. Celia mocks her cottage plans as “fads” and wonders why she turned down a proposal from the wealthy but conventional Sir James Chettam. Dorothea is an outsider “a cygnet among the ducklings” Eliot tells us.

Eliot compares her protagonist to Saint Theresa “foundress of nothing, who's loving heartbeats and long after an unattainable goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances instead of hindering in some long-recognizable deed.” In other words, Dorothea is someone who longs to do something greater than what she is brought up to do.

If she lived in modern day, Dorothea would be great as a college professor, or an architect who designs houses for lower income families, or the director of a non profit organization that assists people with housing and education. But alas it is the 19th century and she is only raised to be someone's wife. She is stifled in her role as nothing more than a decorative set piece in a man's life.

So Dorothea becomes engaged to Edward Casaubon, an elderly clergyman who is forever researching The Key to All Mythologies. The marriage is unwise to all but Dorothea. Dorothea hopes to become a helpmate to Casaubon by studying various languages, taking notes, researching and maybe publishing their knowledge to the world. She isn't drawn to him physically so much as she is mentally. She believes that he understands her and longs to be his pupil, secretary, and oh yes wife.

What Dorothea gets instead is a man who is cruel and abusive. Casaubon hides his research and does very little with it never wanting it to be published or read by the masses that he feels are beneath him including his wife. He verbally abuses Dorothea when she suggests studying under him and mocks her desires to learn and help others. Far from her intellectual savior, instead Casaubon is as close minded as the rest of the society that Dorothea longed to escape from.

Finding no acceptance from her husband, Dorothea finds friendship in Casaubon's cousin, Will Ladislaw, a free thinking artist. While Will is just as brilliant as Dorothea, she isn't just looking for a fellow intellect though that is a bonus. She becomes aware that she is a woman with emotion, desires, and longings. She and Will become enamored with each other.

While Casaubon is usually unemotional, he manages to choke out enough jealousy that he alters his will out of spite by leaving the estate to Dorothea but if she marries Will, she forfeits the estate entirely.

Ironically, it is only after Casaubon's death that Dorothea becomes the woman that she aspired to become by designing cottages and donating money to various causes. However, she can't ignore her feelings for Will and has a tough decision to make.


Another Middlemarch outsider struck with an unhappy marriage is Tertius Lydgate, a young doctor who arrives to shake things up in the village. While he is seeking a typical marriage with a pretty wealthy bride, he longs to do some good by treating the poor, building a hospital, and conducting scientific research.
Many of his views are held under suspicion by a public that is so reactionary that they question anything that is new. Like Dorothea, Tertius wants to become a different person but is hampered by societal restrictions.

These restrictions are caused by his choice of a wife in the beautiful superficial Rosamond Vincy. Their courtship in which Tertius becomes romantically involved with Rosamond despite objections from her family seems almost like a commentary on Austen's work in which contrivances keep the couple apart until the end in which the couple has a fairy tale wedding. Middlemarch however goes beyond the wedding to show that married life is not what they expected and instead of a cutesy in love couple, Tertius and Rosamond are stuck with opposing views and financial struggles.

Like Dorothea, Tertius thought that he was getting the perfect spouse. He wanted a wife to run his home, connect him to Middlemarch society, and provide the seed money for his medical practice. What he got instead was a Narcissist who spends money on furniture, clothing, jewelry and just about anything else she can put her pretty little hands on.

Rosamond is a lot like Dora Spenlow David Copperfield's first wife, a spoiled childlike fool who is completely unprepared for the realities of adulthood and marriage. Like children do, she wants everything in front of her and is not used to being rejected. Her spoiled attitude and tantrums put her at odds with her husband who resorts to gambling and doing business with shady characters to pay off the debts that Rosamond puts him through.

Above all like Dorothea who wanted intellectual satisfaction, but got emotional desolation in her marriage to Casaubon, Tertius has to compromise his values. Instead of helping poor people, he has to treat and charge wealthy people to keep up with Rosamond's spending sprees.

There are several other subplots throughout the book that all carry the themes of aspirations that are dashed by reality. There is Rosamond's feckless brother Fred, an immature wastrel who realizes too late that superficial charm and idiocy can only go so far as he pursues the poor virtuous Mary Garth. Mary works for a dying cantankerous old man, Featherstone whose greedy relatives gather around him waiting for him to die so they can inherit his money. Sir James Chettam's pursuit of Dorothea is ended by her marriage to Casaubon so he settles for Celia almost as a rebound. Casaubon's research into the Key to All Mythologies is hampered by his xenophobic desire to tie everything to Christian doctrine so he ignores any research that doesn't fit his narrow view. Not to mention his discoveries of current findings are prematurely ended because he can't understand German, the language in which the findings are written, and he is too proud to get assistance. Then there is Dorothea and Celia’s Uncle Arthur who is running for Parliament on a Reform platform that gets shouted down and insulted by his constituency.

All of the characters in Middlemarch have dreams and aspirations to be something more or greater than what they are. While some succeed, most are dashed or altered. The characters compromise values, integrity, finances, and their ideals to settle into lives that were far from what they wanted or expected.

Even when characters get married, there is much tongue clicking and questioning about whether it's the right thing or not. This leaves the ending as somewhat ambiguous when the Reader learns that Tertius and Dorothea become shells of the people they wanted to be for the sake of the conventions that they longed to change or fight against but instead have to settle.

While her characters especially Dorothea could be mirrors of Eliot, the contrast between Eliot and her protagonist cannot be ignored. Dorothea might have been Eliot if she wasn't a writer and didn't have a way to express her creative desires. If Eliot didn't have the courage to live her life according to her principles and not other people's standards, she might have become Dorothea trying to find outlets through her marriages but ending up unfulfilled and dissatisfied. Dorothea Brooke went one way and her author, George Eliot thankfully went another.

New Book Alert: Addictarium: The War Stories Chronicles by Nicole D'Settemi; A Disturbing, Confusing but Unforgettable Novel of Addiction and Recovery

New Book Alert: Addictarium: The War Stories Chronicles by Nicole D'Settemi; A Disturbing, Confusing but Unforgettable Novel of Addiction and Recovery

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: Nicole D'Settemi's Addictarium is different from your typical novel about drug addiction. Most of the novels focus on the addict, how they got started, and why they turned to drugs. The Reader will learn about their addiction and how it destroyed the addict and their friends and family. Then there will be the obligatory near-death rock bottom moment when the addict realizes that they need help and enter recovery where they then emerge a better stronger person who now vows to live a clean drug free life.

Well Addictarium is not that kind of book. Nicole D'Settemi's disturbing and at times confusing book begins where most books about addiction ends. It's not so much about the addiction as it is about the recovery from it and what happens when the people who are assigned to help the addict recover are worse than they are.

Danielle Martino is a heroin addict. The prologue and first chapter speed through her addiction where she moves from overachiever upper middle class student to troubled, sick, and paranoid addict in the space of a few paragraphs.

There are some pretty graphic moments such as when she turns to prostitution to feed her addiction and when the effects turn her partially blind before she decides to seek recovery.

Mostly, D'Settemi focuses on Danielle's discovery of The Village, an upscale rehabilitation center which promises compassionate care to its patients. Finding nothing to lose except her addiction, Danielle checks in.


Most of the book deals with the power struggles Danielle has with the counselors and other patients as well as her longing to return to heroin. Many of the patients have hang ups of their own. After Danielle breaks up with her boyfriend on the outside and her best friend leaves, she becomes involved with Sasha, a female patient in a romance that is emotional, moving, but at the same time tense and borderline obsessive. Things get even more heated when Sasha leaves and the feelings of abandonment consume Danielle to the point where she wants to start using again.

As bad as the patients are, the staff of the Village are just as disturbing. There are many restrictions and rules which the patients question but are ordered to follow. Many of the counselors treat the patients with contempt and disdain rather than real concern for their well-being and recovery. Compassionate care apparently doesn’t really exist in this nightmare rehab dojo.

Of particular notice are the behaviors of two counselors. One, Nehemiah takes advantage of female patients before he gets fired for having a sex and drugs ring on the side. There are also other staff members who break boundaries with the patients.

While Nehemiah and some of the others are clear jerks, even the most helpful can be the most harmful. Danielle becomes obsessively infatuated with her primary counselor Angel. She thinks about him when he isn't around. She constantly worries about what he would think. He is trying to help her recover from her addiction but she confuses his concern for love.

Rather than let her down gently, Angel encourages her behavior to the point that after he leaves his position, the two embark on an affair. There are some genuinely sweet moments where Danielle wants to give up and Angel encourages her to keep going.

However, they are tempered with the realization that their romance began when Angel was Danielle's counselor and that while Danielle pursued him, she was mentally ill. Angel should have resisted. It was on him to end it. Every time they are together, this Reader wants to scream “Dude! Boundaries!”

Also while he is more tender than Nehemiah, Angel is still using her in his own way and comes off no better than he is. He does not respect the counselor-patient link and believes that he is doing right by becoming involved with her. She needs someone to take care of her and he needs someone to take care of. It makes you wonder if they would still be together, if she recovers and he isn't her caregiver.


With patients,staff, and counselors looking out for themselves it's no wonder that Danielle has a hard time with her recovery. It is also no surprise when she is given a bag of heroin and succumbs once more to her addiction finding no acceptance in sobriety.

There are parts in the narrative that are confusing possibly purposely so. Characters overlap. The setting moves from the Village to the streets without any meaningful transition. It's hard to follow the actions of the plot when the setting and characters are lost.

This makes Danielle comes across as an Unreliable Narrator which could possibly be the point. Do the other patients have emotional problems or does Danielle see them that way? Are the staff really that cold or is Danielle resisting their attempts to help them justifying it in her head that they never wanted to help? Nehemiah was fired but was he a pervert or did Danielle believe patient's gossip and innuendo that he was? What about Angel? Did he really overstep his boundaries as a counselor or did Danielle believe he did?

Because of the confusion within Danielle's narration, the ending where she returns to therapy is ambiguous. Will she finally recover or will she fall into the same pattern and regress? The only one who can answer those questions is Danielle herself.