Plot summary (with spoilers): Cedric Errol is the 7-year-old son of the deceased Captain Errol, a British subject, and Mrs. Errol, the Captain’s American wife. Captain Errol came from an aristocratic family with a long, distinguished lineage and immense land holdings in England. But he earned his father’s wrath for going to America and marrying [...]
Plot summary (with spoilers): Thomas Fowler is a British journalist covering the French Indochina War from Saigon. At the beginning of the novel, he enjoys a rather contented existence. He’s not at the front lines, and his home life is sweetened by his young Vietnamese lover, Phuong. Soon thereafter, however, Fowler meets a 30-something American [...]
Plot summary (from the publisher): (Note: This book was way too long for me to be able to sum up adequately, so I’ll just put the publisher’s blurb here.) “The Fountainhead studies the conflict between artistic genius and social convention, a theme Ayn Rand later developed into the idealistic philosophy knows as Objectivism. Rand’s hero [...]
Plot summary (with spoilers): Bleak House is one of Charles Dickens’s longest novels, which is definitely saying something about the length of this tome! It is a sweeping epic that covers lots of events and involves many, many characters. As such, it is practically impossible to talk about everything in my customary five-paragraph summaries. I [...]
Plot summary (with spoilers): This is the fifth novel in the beloved Anne of Green Gables series, and it continues the story of Anne Shirley’s charmed life. The book begins with Anne’s marriage to longtime sweetheart Gilbert Blythe, now a doctor. The wedding is held at Green Gables, and is the first one on the [...]
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The narrator of this story is Humbert Humbert, a former literary scholar who, as the novel opens, is in jail awaiting trial for murder. While there, he composes the story of Lolita, the “nymphet” he has been in love with for six years. After briefly describing his own childhood and [...]
Plot summary (with spoilers): In Chancery and the subsequent interlude, Awakening, are the third and fourth installments of The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy. As the entire collection would be far too difficult to sum up in a single blog post, I thought it would be best to tackle them one or two at a [...]
Plot summary (with spoilers): To Let is the fifth and final installment of The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy. As the entire collection would be far too difficult to sum up in a single blog post, I thought it would be best to tackle them one or two at a time. This entry covers the [...]
Plot summary (with spoilers): The Man of Property and the subsequent interlude, Indian Summer with a Forstye, are the first two installments of The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy. As the entire collection would be far too difficult to sum up in a single blog post, I thought it would be best to tackle them [...]
Plot summary (with spoilers): One day Gregor Samsa awakens to find that he has been changed into a large bug while he slept. His thoughts remain distinctly human, but his body, movements, and appetite now resemble those of a massive beetle or cockroach (Kafka doesn’t specify what kind of bug Gregor has become, nor do [...]