GENRE: Historical Fiction
SETTING: England, 1763
MY GRADE: B
SYNOPSIS: London, summer 1763. At nineteen, Anne Jaccob is awakened to the possibility of joy when she meets Fub, the butcher's apprentice, and begins to imagine a life of passion with him.
The only daughter of well-to-do parents, Anne lives a sheltered life. Her home is a miserable place. Though her family want for nothing, her father is uncaring, her mother is ailing, and the baby brother who taught her to love is dead. Unfortunately her parents have already chosen a more suitable husband for her than Fub. But Anne is a determined young woman, with an idiosyncratic moral compass. In the matter of pursuing her own happiness, she shows no fear or hesitation. Even if it means getting a little blood on her hands.
MY THOUGHTS: This story took just over 200 pages to get going but boy did it get going. The author took her time, too much so, detailing the boring, mundane life of Anne, starting when she was twelve. The synopsis says she's nineteen but I don't think that was mentioned in the book. Her father doesn't seem to like her much and I don't know why. Her mother is always in bed recovering from some miscarriage or such, and she seems like a decent parent, though absent.
The synopsis says Anne is from a well-to-do family but I never sensed that she was. I don't know why but I imagined her in a typical house that lower middle class people lived in that as isolated from neighbors. The only staff was one cook, Jane, and one housekeeper, Grace, though they are only a family of three so maybe two employees was normal for only three well-off people back then. Nothing in the house was ever described, nor was the outside of the house, so I never felt any opulence. The author was very descriptive about most things, especially gross things, which I appreciated. The atmosphere felt gloomy but not quite Gothic to me, but maybe it was. Like a lot of books, all the action took place right at the end.
Anne meets Fub (Frederick) Warner, who works for the butcher, Titus Levener. He's beneath her station in life and he thinks they can't be together because of it so they have to be secretive in their affair. She's taken with him and will do what she can to have him. We don't know how old he is. I like his character. I like too when he told her twice to bring money with her when they meet to go to the fair. He wanted her to pay for it all.
Every bad thing that happened in the last 70 pages or so involving Anne, and that's how long it took for anything to really happen, I really liked, especially the bell tower incident. That'll teach ya to try blackmailing someone. I didn't realize what was about to happen until right before it did. And the fire scene? Great and dramatic, just like out of a horror movie. I have mixed feelings about the ending, as in the very last page. Where on earth was Anne going? It seems like a possible set-up for a sequel, but I just don't think that was the plan. It just shouldn't have taken over 200 pages of a 340 page book to see Anne's bad deeds in action and I wish incidents had been peppered throughout the story.
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