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#ReadAway2024

Read as a chapter-a-day with the #HashTagBrigade or I probably would have dropped this one. A group in the 1920s on holiday on the Italian Riviera sounds good in theory but this was really a bunch of annoying & unlikable people who mostly whined & talked around things. There was no fun on this trip! Luckily it‘s a short book & @BarkingMadRead is good with entertaining hashtags. 😉
Would I read more from this author? Maybe?🤷🏻‍♀️

Elizabeth Bowen‘s prose is exquisite. There are occasional sentences that are absolute perfection. Unfortunately, there were many more sentences (at least for me) that were absolutely cryptic. Even after rereading them more than once, I still had no clue what they meant. And the fact that I didn‘t like most of the characters in this book didn‘t help. ⬇️

A farcical story about a middle age man Douglas who tells his wife he is going to Scotland fishing but sets of on an artistic groups visit to Moscow with his lover the flamboyant actress Nina, who then appears to be permanently avoiding him. His journey around 1980s Russia with the other members and the authoritive olga makes for a strange tale of misadventures. Enjoyable, strange ending, as ever Bainbridge is a great storyteller but not my fave

Part of me loved the bits of humor in the book. Another part of me honestly had no clue what was going on sometimes—to be fair to the book, I was distracted a lot while reading, so may have missed info. I plan to read this again in the future to see what I may have missed. But, I leave this list feeling a bit let down. Oh well! #PemberLittens #HashtagBrigade #192025 #1927

A pretty read with the #hashtagbrigade but not my favorite novel. It felt like a play with strange vignettes of an odd vacation.

Would have made a better movie! Where is Merchant Ivory when you need him? #hashtagbrigade makes every book awesome though

Ch 25: that‘s how it ended?!? #miltonandronnieleft #someladieswentforawalk #theend #theyalllivedeverafter #hashtagbrigade

I can see this is her first novel. It isn‘t polished like other things of hers I‘ve read, and you can see from these vignettes why it makes sense that she goes on to write novels, short stories and nonfiction, which is pretty unusual. There‘s plenty to criticize here, but I enjoyed it enough that I want to pick up another of her later novels. (& I definitely want to see the film version, which will be an instant cult classic 🙃😂) #hashtagbrigade

I‘m sure this book had very insightful thoughts about Society at the time, but despite the funny parts (the elevator 🤣 the bathtub 😂) it was not for me. I still think it would have made a great movie though. #hashtagbrigade

Thank you @BarkingMadRead for leading us. Bring on Dracula!

Is there anything better than a pulp cover for literary fiction?

This is an “it's interesting pick“ rather than an “I really enjoyed it pick.“ It was sometimes funny and definitely inspired emotions, but much of it was either too much of its time or simply too clever for me to understand.

#HashtagBrigade