Briar Patch Books

Tag: British novels

  • Playing a risky game

    Reviewed by Paul T. O’Connor SWEET TOOTH. By Ian McEwan. Anchor Books. 400 pages, Softcover. $15.95 Serena Frome has been playing out of her league all her life. The mostly overlooked daughter of an Anglican bishop, she attends Cambridge University, where she’s a middling student in “the maths” and the target of derision by more…

  • When “peace” isn’t peaceful

    As frequent readers of this blog know, I’ve long been intrigued by the World War I era in England – the war itself and the aftermath, the effects of the war. So many men were killed, and so many others were maimed in body or spirit or both. And the war profoundly changed British society.…

  • The Bennets – viewed from below

    Jane Austen, who published her novels anonymously, cannot in her wildest dreams have imagined the life her works would have long after she was gone. There have been sequels, spoofs, spinoffs and retellings, movies, a mystery series starring Jane as the sleuth, the popular novel and movie The Jane Austen Book Club… And now, 200…