Period Piece (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

Rating:
Summary: Treat yourself
Review: An absolute masterpiece of comic writing. Ms. Raverat drawings mesh perfectly with her loving, but not pious, treatment of her eccentric aunts and uncles. A deft ironist, a great memoir of late 19th century Cambridge. I promise you will force this book on everyone you love and they will thank you for it.

Rating:
Summary: a wonderful window into an amazing family
Review: Darwin fanatics and Jane Austen fans will gobble up this delicious dessert. Written by Darwin's grandaughter (Raverat was George's daughter born too late to know her illustrious grandfather personally)PERIOD PIECE contains both a wealth of Family Stories that helps humanize the usual image of the Great Victorian Sage and some real (although often tongue-in-cheek) insights into Late-Victorian/Edwardian Society. As Raverat says in the Preface, the book doesn't really have a beginning or an end, it is easily dipped-in-to at any point & you will have to be totally lacking in a sense of humor not to come away both charmed & informed.

Rating:
Summary: All this and the Darwins too
Review: This is a really lovely book, perfect for reading at bedtime or in the garden under the apple tree on a summer's afternoon. Gwen Raverat writes vividly with chapters by theme rather than chronologically and and gives a rounded view of her childhood experiences and the Darwin family of uncles and aunts.