Rating: 
Summary: Longing for freedom
Review: This haunting novel set in XVII century England is full of people inhibitted by the time and place in which they live. The only one who seemed free and satisfied is the dead women. Hard lives, superstition,persistent smell of death and decay ,even ghosts, real and imagined.
This is a story of human longing for freedom, one thing we all have in common, but few of us ever achieve. At the end we can't help but sincerelly hope that unnamed young woman who tells the story is one of the few chosen.
Rating:
Summary: In the eye of the beholder
Review: Village life is quiet and uneventful in 17th Century England, the people godly and hardworking, far removed from the temptations of a large city. Dora is the local prostitute, larger than life in stature, personality and reputation, come from "across the sea". Everything changes when Dora's lifeless body is found at the bottom of a ravine, apparently an accident. When it becomes known that Dora was pregnant, suspicions are awakened. Dora has a son, Long Boy, now left to fend for himself, with only a neighboring midwife to care for his needs. An oversized eleven-year-old with the mind of a child and the body of a man, Long Boy is distraught, but no one is able to comfort him. The daughter of the midwife is a maid who works in the Great House as a servant. She enjoyed Dora, was fascinated by her strength, her common sense and her bravery in living alone, supporting herself and the boy. This young maid can't shake the feeling that there is more behind the prostitute's death than is immediately apparent. Unfortunately, this small Elizabethan village is a place haunted by religious paranoia and a pervasive fear of "Satan". Their lives are constrained by strict moral convention, even more vulnerable to the fears that run rampant through their superstitious minds. Suspicious of witches, the villagers are determined to blame the death on someone. Determined to get to the bottom of the matter, the girl listens carefully to gossip in the Great House, while performing duties for her master, Edward, whose body is twisted by birth defects. Daily, she cares for Edward's aging mother, who is frequently ill, perhaps even dying. The mistress hires a painter to do her portrait, in spite of her illness, hoping the deformed Edward will agree to sit for one as well. Edward makes a different request of the painter: recreate Dora's face, using the maid as a guide for the likeness. The maid has no time to indulge in romantic fantasies, although she is attracted to the portrait painter. But even the painter has a strange tale to tell, in the end, and a connection to Dora. Through the emotional trauma, it never occurs to the young woman that anyone would offer her comfort. Presented with the damning testimony of neighbors, the midwife is accused of Dora's death. The maid doggedly pursues each clue and when evidence points to her own family history, secrets her mother has kept for nineteen years, the girl summons considerable fortitude, ready to face the ugly truth and force others to listen. In a century riddled with superstition, this novel echoes with the ignorance so common to rural villages. Isolation breeds suspicion; women are vulnerable to accusations by others, often prompted by jealousy. In such a place and time, the maid might toil her years away as a servant in the Great House, her future preordained by circumstance. Masters control their servants, with the power to offer them days of drudgery or small comforts. Dora is an anomaly in this village, a woman who is tolerated because of her good spirit and inner strength: "She did not choose fate, but created it." Luan Gaines/2003.
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