Rose Cottage: Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl

Rating:
Summary: Sweet and Romantic
Review: I love Mary Stewart books and this one I enjoyed just as much as all her others. My all time favorite is Touch Not the Cat, but I read the Rose Cottage in one night straight. I stayed up until 5:00 in the morning, it was just too good to put down. From the setting of small town life and the diverse characters Stewart creates to the suspense of the mystery of lovely Kathy's mother, I had a lot of fun with this book.

Rating:
Summary: Favorite Author
Review: I think I have everything written by Mary Stewart--at least I try. She so vividly pictures everything for the reader that one feels one is right there in that world. I keep watching for any of her books that I might not have and any new ones.

Rating:
Summary: Halcyon Days
Review: In this third of what I call the cottage trilogy, Mary Stewart abandons the exotic and returns to what she holds dear and with which she is most familiar, life in the north country. Although many readers of these three novels, "Thornyhold", "The Stormy Petrel" and "Rose Cottage", feel that Stewart's storytelling techniques within them had weakened, I do not find this to be the case. I agree that these storylines do not revolve around a situation involving murder or any other sort of mayhem that provides the focal point of her internationally set so-called suspense thrillers. Here, the first person narrators are in a transitional period where the discovery of self becomes the primary mystery and the gentile north country setting provides part of an answer rather than an exotic backdrop. The lack of alien setting or heart-pumping life and death circumstances does not, however, detract from Ms. Stewart's overwhelming ability to place the reader inside the head of the narrator and see the world from her perspective. The same talented hand that wrote "My Brother Michael" and "This Rough Magic" is ever present in the warm and comfortable scenes depicted within the Rose Cottage. As her uncanny ability to reproduce a scene for all five senses works as powerfully here as in any of her other works, I merely think the novel contains a smaller story, yet maintains the same perfection in storytelling.

Specifically, "Rose Cottage" relates the "coming of awareness" of Kate Herrick, a young woman in a state of transition. Born on the wrong side of the blanket in a small northern village, she faces the future alone in London after the death of her young husband during WWII. Her grandmother's illness calls her back to the village of her childhood to close up her old home and retrieve some beloved items of her grandmother's before the cottage is converted into a rental. Here, in her inimitable way, Stewart flourishes as a writer. Her descriptions are beyond comparison and her ability to introduce us to the strong, plainspoken and unforgettable country personalities that she herself must know and love, locks us into her beloved territory where gardens are all secret and incredibly beautiful, cats and dogs make the most satisfying companions and neighbors, however annoying, make the most wonderful apple pie. Expertly, Stewart manipulates the interplay of the village curiosity with Kate's happy but reluctant past, serving to simulataneously rewelcome Kate into the old fold and to alert her to strange goings-on at the cottage that unbeknownst to anyone relate directly to Kate's questions about herself and her future.

I recommend this simple story to all those who love Stewart's way with words. I listened to this book on unabridged audio and found myself not only well-acquainted with all the adorable quirky characters but quite willing to give-up my semi-urban existence for a life in a lovely rose cottage where the milkman still delivers whole milk in a glass bottle and a cup of tea competently takes the place of any prescription drug.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but not up to Mary Stewart's earlier standard.
Review: Rose Cottage is the story of a young widow's quest for information about her family and very origins. Kate, a war widow, returns to her childhood home, Rose Cottage, to obtain her ill grandmother's treasures,including papers that may hold a clue to Kate's own history. The storyhas the earmarks of a Mary Stewart read, but is lacking the richnessof the author's early books, such as Nine Coaches Waiting, and MadameWill You Talk?. The novel doesn't refer to early English literature likeher previous books do, and the characters aren't as well developed. However,as an avid Mary Stewart fan, I would never say "no" to an afternoon with Mary Stewart!