Less drowing in books

A brief update:

1. I finally finished  The Cornish Trilogy. Very good book and I'm looking forward to reading more Robertson Davies when I have less currently reading books on my list.

2. Finished The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game. Shadow was pretty good. Angel was a bit...well bonkers. 

3. Finished The Astors. Okay, but a bit forgettable. I am now on An Intimate History of Marie Antoinette off the old Kindle unlimited list. 

4. Working on finishing a couple more soon, altho I got a bit distracted by Havisham. This week I have mostly been reading American Tabloid, The Name of the Rose, a bit of War and Peace and a bit of my current Poldark. I read a bit of A Little Life today. The Quincunx needs a bit of work and I can't really stop for too long with War and Peace because I will lose my thread and get bored of the war bits! It's currently not a thrill ride, that's all I'm saying.

Havisham by Ronald Frame (spoilers),

I loved this book so much, and I can't understand why it didn't get better reviews on Goodreads. From what I can make out, I think people were disappointed by the way that Frame depicted the relationship that broke Miss Havisham's heart, expecting it to be something like Wuthering Heights, madness included, but it was far more subtle than that. Havisham describes the reason that Catherine falls for Compeyson in the first place and why she reacts in such a way to his rejection. Coming from a socially climbing family, she loses her mother at a young age, growing up without companions convinced that she is not really beautiful. She feels rejected by her father when he brings her loathsome secret half-brother to live with them and sends her away to live with another family to become more ladylike. Catherine slowly discovers that most of the people in her life have hidden agendas, so it is pretty much inevitable that she will fall in love with a man who pays her attention, only to feel utterly devastated when he jilts her at the altar.  Compeyson also manages to wreck the brewing business she attempts to run when her father dies, so she is pretty much left with nothing.

She is depicted as being both rather self-obsessed and blind to both the faults and good qualities of others. However, I think Frame manages to make the reader sympathetic to her eventual madness, and avoids descending into Gothic melodrama. Again, this is handled subtly.  He explains the slight changes he makes from the source material as Great Expectations being a novel that Pip is writing, but I didn't find the deviations jarring.

I thought that the way he describes her end as being beautifully handled and quite spiritual.

It did remind me a little of Wide Sargasso Sea, although it is less experimental and probably doesn't delve quite as deeply into the protagonist's psychological state.