The House, Edith Ayrton Zangwill. The last of Edith's novels scanned by
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kurowasan, will eventually be posted on Project Gutenberg -- sad to have gotten to the last one, and also this is a sad book, though with enough happiness mixed in to keep it from being too depressing.
However, for the rest of you who haven't been peeking to the unproofread scans,
The Rise of a Star is on Gutenberg, and is also about family and absurdly rich Americans, but is substantially happier. (Don't read the Gutenberg summary, which is AI-generated and only based on the first three chapters, read
my review. Or read
the review on Litbrit if you don't want to take my word for it. But as far as I can tell, all other descriptions of this book out there are slop.)
Anyway,
The House (1928) is about how you can't have an English Country House in post-WWI US, no matter how convenient it would be for a wealthy expat who decides to move back to America to flee British Income Tax. The story is in three parts, each focusing on a different family who briefly possesses the house before tragedy befalls them, with the one character in common being the English butler, who is even more devoted to the house than to its inhabitants. There are some delightful characters that move in and out of the story, and that I would have liked to spend more time with; unsuprisingly I have a weak spot for the brilliant Jewish-American mathematican who looks young for her age. (This is the only one of Ayrton Zangwill's novel to have Canonically Jewish Characters, and it gives an interesting look into both wealthy assimilated Jewish-American culture and interwar Zionism.)
Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir, Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman. Recommended by
troisoiseaux. The memoirist was a girl from Applachia who arrived as a freshman at Columbia University in 1999 with dreams of becoming a professional violinist; finding herself a small fish in a big pond, she switched to Middle Eastern studies and journalism -- which seemed like a more solid career path, especially after 9/11. But one of the jobs she found to pay the bills involved doing the violin equivalent of lip-synching to recorded music. After graduating she was frustrated to find that it was easier to get a job going on tour doing that than pursuing the Serious Journalism career she wanted. Eventually she went to get an MFA in creative nonfiction, and was frustrated to find that people were still more interested in her writing about her fake-violinist career than current events in the Middle East -- which is understandable, as this book provides fascinating stories of that, as well as a sense of the cultural moment in post 9-11 America. It also holds together thematically, with interesting commentary on taste, elitism, imposter syndrome, and gender. It didn't quite resonate with me, but it may resonate more with one of you.
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pinchhits
