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March 2011 Book of the Month: The Raven's Bride by Lenore Hart

A monthly discussion on varying themes guided by our members. (Book of the Month discussions through December 2011 can be found in this section too.)
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Divia
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Post by Divia » Sat March 5th, 2011, 3:56 pm

[quote=""Undine""] Hart's choice was to either have some sort of plot and action going on--in which case you'd have to make Edgar at least a co-lead character--or focus strictly on Virginia, and wind up with a novel centered around music lessons and consumption.

Now that I think of it, the fact that no one has ever come up with a really good novel about Poe isn't too surprising.[/quote]

That's the problem with 19 century books focused on domestic women. There isn't a whole lot going on, in many situations.

I still enjoyed the book. I didn't think it was the best book EVER. It was a nice read and then I moved on to the next one.
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Margaret
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Post by Margaret » Mon March 7th, 2011, 8:43 pm

wind up with a novel centered around music lessons and consumption.
Actually, once Virginia got really involved in her music and also started getting serious consumption symptoms, around the last 1/3 of the novel, it did start getting interesting to me. The conflict between her wish to perform as a singer/pianist and her mother's disapproval of the type of singing work she was offered perked up the story for me, and a life-and-death struggle always has plot possibilities. I thought Hart handled the consumption storyline pretty well - there was a lot more to it than Virginia just languishing in bed, from her struggle to sing despite her illness, to the ghostly visitations from her brother and her dilemma after dying over whether to stick around for Eddy rather than follow her brother to the light. I found it interesting reading.
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Undine
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Post by Undine » Tue March 8th, 2011, 3:31 pm

I'll really be curious to know what more "non-Poe people" make of this novel. For me, whenever I came across things in RB that we know didn't happen, couldn't possibly have happened, or were not true to what we know about the "real-life" characters or their history, I found it really distracting. (Let alone all the times I'd read a scene, and mutter, "Cothburn O'Neal strikes again!")

I suppose anyone not familiar with Poe's life wouldn't be bothered by such things, but the more I studied the novel, the more irritated I got.

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boswellbaxter
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Post by boswellbaxter » Sat March 12th, 2011, 1:42 am

I've started reading it today. I'm enjoying it so far, but I know little of Poe's life and even less about Virginia's. I do find Virginia an appealing character.
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Undine
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Post by Undine » Sat March 12th, 2011, 1:08 pm

Yes, it is interesting in some ways--and Virginia, in "real life" was a very appealing personality.

I just kind of hate the thought that people who know nothing about her or Edgar will assume that this is some sort of wholly factual account of who they really were. I'm surprised to see how often historical fiction gets treated literally.

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Divia
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Post by Divia » Sat March 12th, 2011, 4:27 pm

Yeah but that happens with so many historical fiction books, as you stated. I suppose one can't it personally. The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott was fictional but I just went along for the ride and enjoyed it.
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Margaret
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Post by Margaret » Sat March 12th, 2011, 10:43 pm

Divia's right. I think. With novels, it just goes with the territory that some people will wrongly assume everything they are reading is factual, but even the novelists who try hardest to stick to the factual framework underlying their stories have to use their imaginations and make things up in between that will not necessarily correspond with what really happened. Hopefully, the benefits of reading a novel and becoming more interested in learning more about history will outweigh the downside of making false assumptions based on a fictional story - and if readers assume everything they read in a novel is factual, they have only themselves to blame.
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boswellbaxter
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Post by boswellbaxter » Mon March 14th, 2011, 2:44 am

I'm about halfway through this and am still enjoying it; I think Hart does a good job of developing her characters. Has anyone read her novel Becky?
Susan Higginbotham
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Undine
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Post by Undine » Mon March 14th, 2011, 11:52 am

If you still like this book by the time you're finished, then I'd really be curious to know how you like "The Very Young Mrs. Poe," if you can dig up a copy. Hart basically borrowed her character development from this book as well, although arguably O'Neal made everyone more likable.

On another forum, a poster agreed that these two novels were very similar, but she thought O'Neal's book was far better!

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boswellbaxter
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Post by boswellbaxter » Mon March 14th, 2011, 1:18 pm

[quote=""Undine""]If you still like this book by the time you're finished, then I'd really be curious to know how you like "The Very Young Mrs. Poe," if you can dig up a copy. Hart basically borrowed her character development from this book as well, although arguably O'Neal made everyone more likable.

On another forum, a poster agreed that these two novels were very similar, but she thought O'Neal's book was far better![/quote]

I find that a lot of historical novels about the same historical figures are similar, not necessarily because the later authors have borrowed from the earlier authors but because they're working with the same historical material and relying on the interpretations by the same biographers.

How accurate is the Wikipedia article on Virginia?
Susan Higginbotham
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http://www.susanhigginbotham.com/
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