Jude Morgan (1)Besprekingen

Cuando el encantador y manirroto capitán Fortune le confiesa a su hija Caroline que se han arruinado definitivamente, a la joven no le quedará otro remedio que seguir su buen sentido y aceptar un empleo como señorita de compañía de una adinerada dama de muy mal carácter.
En su nueva posición, su belleza, encanto y sensibilidad atraerán la atención de numerosos admiradores... Sin embargo, la muchacha no tardará en darse cuenta de que la atracción que despierta en algún caballero no significa necesariamente matrimonio.
Tras una terrible escena con su atrabiliaria patrona, Caroline iniciará una vida muy distinta con los parientes de su difunta madre. Harta del orgullo del gran mundo y de las vanidades de la alta sociedad, sólo quiere tranquilidad y paz... pero muy pronto comprobará que es imposible escapar de las intrigas y enredos.
Para complicar aún más las cosas, irrumpirá en escena el joven Stephen Milner, tan excéntrico como apuesto, tal vez el único hombre capaz de que Caroline vea más allá de sus prejuicios y entienda que la aristocracia y amor verdadero no están necesariamente reñidos.

I like Jude Morgan's writing style and this is his third book I've read. There didnt seem a whole lot to the tale of composer Berlioz and his actress wife, though. It started well, but I kind of lost inteerst

Symphony is a bold, beautiful, and haunting tale set against the culture of the nineteenth century. The theater, Romantic art, and, above all, music play an important role in the story's setting. Two lives are transformed and destroyed at the center of the story. All of this was sparked by aspects of genius, inspiration, and craziness, with the revolutionary spirit of the times adding to the excitement.

This book started off promising, got quite slow in the middle, and then ended okay. Overall, it seemed like the author was attempting to mimic Jane Austen's writing/storytelling, and did a decent, though slightly, dry pass at it. It wasn't a poorly-written book or anything: I just had to force myself to push through it.

Lydia Templeton was not a female protagonist that I admired greatly. Although she was an intelligent, strong personality, she failed to examine her own faults and was quick to look for them and even distort the faults of others. Much of this unattractive trait was only revealed in her inner dialogue, with the exception being whenever she was in the presence of Mr. Durrant, her neighbor and spurned former beaux. Her selfishness and critical tendencies flared more glaringly when she was away from her Papa, Dr. Templeton, a man of very gentle character and a benign tempering influence. The mutable love vacillations of her friend and protégé , Miss Phoebe Rae was tedious and overdone. I failed to see the appeal of either of her suitors, Mr. A or Mr. B. Subsequently, I found myself skimming the paragraphs, in true doubt I would be pleased if she chose either of them. As she was an heiress with fifty thousand pounds (3.9Mil by today's standards), I rather thought if I was in that enviable position, I'd be profoundly more choosy and take my time! For welcomed comic relief we were given the prattling of absurdly pretentious Mrs. Vawser (all my friends will tell you...) and the vulgar, preening Mrs. Allardyce (it may sound impertinent, but that's my way...) who showed the worst examples of regency womanhood. Yet, I did not enjoy this novel of Mr. Morgan's quite as much as the first one I read entitled Indiscretion. However, in my review of that book, I criticized the abrupt slipshod ending. This ending was a small measure improved. All being said, Jude Morgan is still a cut above in the quality of writing compared to other clean regency romances.

Pros: Deserves the comparisons w Georgette Heyer. Yet I would say falls somewhere between Heyer and Austen on writing quality. The dialogue between Mr. Milner and Miss Fortune was very sarcastic and funny. Another reviewer aptly called it 'sharp wordplay'. I liked the fact that the author captured the settings without being overly descriptive. He also gave you the essence of secondary characters through their own words and only secondly by light-handed description.
Strong female protagonist: Caroline Fortune
You'll love to hate: Mrs. Catling and Mr. Leabrook
You will not trust: Mr. and Miss Downey, Mr. Charles Carraway
Will amuse and exasperate you: Captain Fortune (father), Uncle John Langland and Fanny Milner.
Lovable: Aunt Selina Langland (I loved Uncle John too)
Very good substance to this writing; not fluff. Highly inspired by characters from Jane Austen's writing, you will recognize the archetypes from her work: the rake, the innocent, the rebel, the villain, the trickster, the hero (albeit very flawed).
Cons: Some noticeable contemporary language creeped in at a few occasions.
Frustrating at the end, how plots are wrapped up quite quickly after such a building up of anticipation. These regency HF authors need to do better, it's not just this author who has not spent enough time on a well constructed ending.
!However! I still gave this book 5 stars for standing above the pack in quality of writing throughout, and I am extremely eager to read more of his works.

1) I'm not sure why I hadn't read this before. 2) I'm not sure why this isn't a classic of the genre. IS IT AND I JUST MISSED IT??? I'M JUST?

SUCH CHARM. SUCH WIT. *clutches Caro to bosom*

Wonderful account of Byron, Keats and Shelley and the women who formed part of their romantic and tragic circle. I had a general idea of some of the story but learnt so much; all the characters are so vivid, their personalities brought out in conversation; in occasional monologues.
Opening with the unhappy account of Mary Wollstonecraft's early, unconventional life, the narrative moves on to the daughter she leaves behind- Mary Godwin-; and the stepsister acquired by her father's second marriage- Jane (later Claire) Clairmont. Into their humble but literary life comes the poet Shelley. And later Byron...who has moved from disturbed Caroline Lamb to his married half sister to a short-lived marriage with a principled lady... And the most normal of the group- Keats - dying of consumption- and his beloved Fanny Brawne.,

I love Jude Morgan's books which bring history to life.½

Caroline Fortune is at an age where she must "do" something to assist in her and her father's living situation. Her father sort of gets her a job as a rich lady's companion, Mrs. Sophia Catling.
In Brighton, Caroline meets her companion's nieced and nephew, Maria and Mathew Downey and a friend Richard Leabrook.
After an indiscreet proposal from Leabrook and is turned down, he leaves and Caroline receives a letter from her mother's sister. (her mother's family disowned her mother)
The sister, Mrs. Selina Langland writes Caroline that her father has died and to come to the funeral. Mrs. Catling refuses Caroline's request and says if she leaves she'll be terminated.
On and on it goes, twists and turns in Caroline's life.
It was a good story, well written and I enjoyed the writing style.

(I'd give this one SIX stars...if GoodReads would allow me to do so...) A biographical novel about French composer Hector Berlioz -- especially focusing on his romance and marriage with Harriet Smithson. Wonderful insight into the characters and a strong sense of place (as one would expect from this author). Also very moving. A genuine triumph -- and my favorite among the Morgan novels I've read thus far. (I even RE-read it some time after the first reading!)

Jude Morgan has drifted in and out of my awareness these last few years, but it wasn’t until I settled down with An Accomplished Woman that I realised he’s rather brilliant at Regency comedies of manners in a Georgette Heyer style. Indeed, I decided I was going to thoroughly enjoy it based on the final lines of the very first chapter. The rest of the book channels Heyer with aplomb, boasting a plot that has certain echoes of her novels, but Morgan infuses it all with a modern consciousness that gives it a warmly witty spark, and stuffs it so full of bon mots that I was kept busy scribbling them all down...

For the full review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2018/01/10/an-accomplished-woman-jude-morgan/

"It’s because I’m all wrong that I have to find something right. And I found it here, in this room. We all did, didn’t we? We found something that alters the conditions of life. You write. You write yourself out of it, you write it out, you write it right.” ( p. 258)

Like many other readers, I suspect, I first read the books by the Brontes in young adulthood, and I’ve returned to them from time to time, with fresh eyes, over the years. While I’ve never read a formal biography of any of the sisters, I know a few basic details about each of them. Given their talent and the seemingly endless tragedies in their lives, including the fact that not one of the six Bronte children made it to the age of forty, I’m not surprised that a mythology has arisen around them, as it tends to do around gifted, heroic, or beautiful people who are cut down before their time. With the Brontes, you can't help but wonder: what if fate had been kinder?

In The Taste of Sorrow, Jude Morgan has written a moving biographical novel about this iconic, literary family. It is a sort of ensemble piece that begins with the harrowing death of their mother when the eldest of the six children is less than ten years of age; it follows their story (or stories, more precisely) through to the time of Charlotte’s marriage. Morgan writes in the present tense and flexibly shifts point of view between Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—mostly keeping to the third person, but sometimes relating characters' innermost thoughts using the first person point of view. Their brother, Branwell, and father, Patrick, figure prominently in the narrative, but they are always presented from the outside, through the eyes of one of the three sisters.

Morgan’s fine writing (which does not adhere strictly to 19th-century style, rhythm, or idiom) and considerable descriptive powers transport the reader back in time. Because this is a fairly big book, which I read over several days, I had a sense of being with the characters, knowing them in a way I hadn’t before, and even of grieving with and for them.

Since I haven't read any scholarly biographies of the Brontes, I am unable to comment on the liberties Morgan may have taken with the biographical material. His characterization of the three sisters--the serious, self-conscious, approval-seeking Charlotte; the taciturn, fierce, elemental Emily; and the gentle, temperate, slightly bland Anne--is fairly consistent with my previously formed impressions of them. Even though there were no particular surprises in the book (aside from some information about Charlotte's husband), reading it was a rewarding experience, both intellectually and emotionally.

Terrible writing! I couldn't get past the first chapter. Jude Morgan is a horrible storyteller.

Transports the reader into 1600s England
By sally tarbox on 3 January 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
An extraordinarily rich, vivid novel, almost Shakespearean in style, which takes the reader from Will at 18 - son of a Stratford glover, fascinated by the strolling players who visit the town, falling for 'older woman' Anne Hathaway, through the next twenty years of his life.
By necessity imagining much, the author describes his relationships - with his siblings, his disapproving father, the wife who is effectively abandoned for long periods as he takes up the acting profession, and Shakespeare's mysterious 'Dark Lady'. Fellow writers and players are brought to life, the jealousy, the drink and casual violence, the aspirations to knowledge and the hints of homosexuality. But Will himself remains a rather vague and unknowable character:

"Follow the dark young player called Will when he leaves the Shoreditch tavern a little later.
Follow his rapid progress through the baffling noonday London streets, where breath is always on your face and human life is collision. Follow him precisely - the trail of his body-shape through the crowds - and you find that you touch no one; that somehow without slackening pace, he ripples and sidles and at every moment presents a slender fencer's breathed-in profile and reaches his destination as free of contact as if he had walked there across a gleaned field."

Written in the voices of Will, Anne and Ben Jonson, I was bowled over by this novel, though it's dense, verbose, poetic, and you need to read it slowly and savour it.

Unputdownable story of the Brontes,
By sally tarbox on 18 November 2016

The Brontes are like Henry VIII - you know their lives inside out, you've read biographies, watched TV documentaries - yet you continue to find their story utterly fascinating, told from different angles, in different ways. So Jude Morgan certainly has great material to begin with - but what a wonderful novel he has crafted from it.
Told in the present continuous (something I don't always enjoy, but it works superbly here), the novel opens with their mother on her death bed, about to leave her five daughters and one son to the care of their rather dour father. In beautifully envisaged scenes and conversations, the author follows them through their wretched school at Cowan Bridge; their secret world and early writings, their various teaching posts, Brussels, Branwell's self-destruction.... He writes from the point of view of various characters, their personalities an amalgamation of historical research and the surely autobiographical hints in the Brontes' works.
Such a brilliant read that I have ordered Mr Morgan's other novels (based on true-life).½

This book had been sitting on my shelf for a few years, and I finally decided it was time to read it for several reasons: I enjoy reading Shakespeare and learning about his life, I enjoy watching his plays, historical fiction (particularly when interwoven with fact) is a favourite genre of mine, and recently there have been the celebrations of 400 years since he died. Which I suppose is a slightly strange thing to celebrate, but still.

Not a lot is actually known about Shakespeare's life, or to put it more precisely, there are large gaps in his biography. This book takes the facts that we do know and weaves a fictional story around them. It never claims to be anything but fictional, but clearly the author has done a lot of research to get as much accuracy in as possible.

I am in two minds about it. On the one hand, there was much to enjoy - the writing was elegant and at times rather beautiful, but also slightly too flowery for my personal tastes. It felt as though 20 words were often used when one would have sufficed. Nonetheless I felt it gave a descriptive portrayal of Shakespeare although there is no way of knowing truly how accurate the portrayal was. Morgan draws him as a serious minded, elusive man who wins everyone's (almost) admiration, yet never really allows anyone to get too close, except for one person who he regrets letting into his life.

One thing to point out about this book is that it is as much about Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway as it is about him, and a fair amount of the story is also given over to Shakespeare's friend and contemporary, Ben Jonson. Shakespeare is seen through both of their eyes, and out of all three characters, Anne probably comes across as the most sympathetic.

Overall I would say that this was a middling book for me - objectively I'd say it was wonderfully written, but subjectively I'd say that it wasn't the best fit for me; however, I enjoyed it enough to want to pick it up each day, but it was so wordy that I couldn't read great swathes of it in one sitting. Interesting though, and I would recommend it to fans of historical fiction and especially to anyone with an interest in William Shakespeare.

Caroline Fortune is a woman of good sense and good humor, both of which she's needed in order to survive. Her father lost what little wealth he had years ago, and now the debt collectors have grown quite severe. Although Caro has better experience with gambling hells than genteel parlors, her father nevertheless manages to secure her a place with a cantankerous old lady. Despite years of experience fending for herself, Caro is still young, and she finds that shifting into the quieter mode of Society rather difficult. Moreover, people keep taking her into their confidence, quite against her protests. When scandals start popping up, how will she protect her reputation?

I really enjoyed this novel. First and foremost, Caroline and the love interest (who I won't name, for fear of spoiling the pleasure of discovering who he is) are unique, well-thought-out characters. Their virtues and their foibles both make complete sense, and their conversations are very entertaining. The secondary characters have distinct voices and personalities, and neither they nor the plot is cribbed from Austen (unlike the majority of Regencies written today).

But like Austen, this is a book that uses a great deal of satire. It's a true pleasure to read an author with both wit and something to say with it. I'm really looking forward to reading more books by Morgan.

A novel of the Bronte family, from the children's childhoods to their deaths. It's told in a beautifully elliptical manner. I got the impression of grim, narrow lives with loads of tragedy and lack of opportunities--but also the shining, open vastness of Emily, Charlotte and Anne's imaginations.

Historical fiction told from the points of view of women who loved three of the most famous Romatnic poets: Byron, Shelley, and Keats. It hews very closely to the known facts, revealing opinions and personalities so unobtrusively and naturally that the prodigious amount of research Morgan must have done is invisible. Beautifully told, with natural dialog and evocative imagery and metaphors. Impressively, I came away from this novel feeling strongly for each of the historical personages, even Byron who I usually dislike. I really wish this had been several equally long books, instead of just one: I would have loved an entire novel of Fanny Brawne and Keats teasing and sighing over each other, for instance.

Lydia is an intelligent, independent woman who refused a very eligible bachelor in her younger years and has lived a fancy-free life with her father ever since. Her godmother asks her to chaperone a young woman and give her the benefit of her experience. Much against her will she becomes involved in this young woman's life to disastrous effect.
This is a mostly well-written book that occasionally goes on a bit too long in monologue, but on the whole is enjoyable. Well-narrated audible book.

This is a thoroughly intense novel...the writing style of the Brontes is applied to their lives, emotions, rampant thoughts. It's not a book you can read while sleepy....Each paragraph is dense, filled with stream-of-consciousness thoughts, spoken and unspoken words, several people's feelings and reactions. The breadth of understanding of the human psyche in general and of these humans' psyches in particular is amazing...obviously a great deal of research has gone into this book.

I think it took me longer to read this book than usual, partly because I got too involved in the characters' lives and sometimes needed a break from the intensity of their quiet lives...but I loved it at times.

Passion- all of its many meanings are represented in this wonderful historical novel about Byron, Shelley, and Keats, as told through the eyes of the women they loved and who loved them in return. They lived extraordinary, scandalous lives filled with love, hate, and lust, touched by genius and tragedy. Perhaps the most outrageous was Byron, whose most famous affairs were with Lady Caroline Lamb, Claire (Jane) Clairmont Godwin, and his half sister Augusta Leigh. He was forced to leave England and move to Italy. Shelley had ideals that were outside the norm and his affair and then marriage to Mary Godwin Shelley also forced them to move from England. They all travelled in a circle of like minded rebels, and their passions destroyed them. The time that Fanny Brawne and John Keats spent together seemed to be more normal, but all too brief. The men all had very early tragic deaths and their genius was not wholly recognized until much later. Jude Morgan captures all of this in a well researched novel that sticks close to the facts as I know them, embellished by the dialog that makes this fiction. The book is told through the different voices of these women, and in different ways. The briefest part is told through Fanny Brawne, although I think I liked her best. The brevity is probably due partly to the fact that Keats had burned all of her letters and they were not at hand for research, and also to the fact that their time together was very brief.

I really enjoyed this book. If you love historical novels, I think you would love this.

Read February 2015

Lydia Templeton, 30, is asked by her godmother to accompany young heiress Phoebe to Bath as her chaperone and help Phoebe to choose between her two suitors, both of whom she claims to be in love with. Lydia's neighbour, Lewis Durrant, whose offer of marriage Lydia declined 10 years ago, also goes to Bath to seeks a wife because he dislikes the man who will otherwise be his heir.

I listened to the first 5 hours on audiobook, decided my life was too short and skipped to the last chapter. The last chapter was very lovely, so I bought the Kindle version and read/skimmed the remaining chapters. It is still my opinion that the last chapter is very lovely, but the book as a whole is too long. The first chapters, set in London and featuring Lydia's brother and his wife, are wholly irrelevant to the main story and should have been dispensed with. There was altogether too much of Phoebe being indecisive and annoyingly naive. Again the whole existence of Emma, her husband and Mrs Vawser (Mrs Elton) was unnecessary to the main plot and could have been omitted without anything being lost.½

Skimmed this. A fun read, but the ending seemed heavily influenced by "Emma".

A Regency romance featuring Caroline, who is forced by poverty to go and work as companion to the domineering Mrs Catling. She is turned off when she insists on time off to go to her father's funeral and is rescued by her previously estranged uncle and aunt. There is a lot more plot - in fact far too much plot. People get propositioned, people run off together a la Lydia Bennet, people get jilted, people cut each other out of inheritances, people suffer unrequited love etc etc. I have to admit to skimming the last third.

It is (as the cover claims) a bit like Georgette Heyer, although not as funny. It is, on the other hand, much better written than any of the other "in the tradition of Georgette Heyer" novels I have tried over the years. The ending was unsatisfactory to me: Fanny's romance troubled me and Caroline's, although we could see it coming, was a bit abrupt.