1863
4 books
- If you liked Lady Audley's Secret, this is Braddon in a warmer mood: Aurora is impulsive and flawed (she horsewhips a stablehand in one startling scene) but you end up rooting for her anyway. It's melodrama with blackmail and a murder, so come ready for that.
- You’ll enjoy the jaunty mix of balloon engineering, African geography, and danger, especially with Fergusson’s cool determination balanced by Kennedy’s skepticism and Joe’s irrepressible humor. It’s episodic and very much a nineteenth-century adventure, so the old-fashioned colonial attitudes can be a rough patch, but the sense of practical wonder carries you along.
- A genuinely strange Victorian fairy tale: Tom the chimney sweep slips underwater and meets creatures like Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby, whose name tells you Kingsley loves a lesson. If you can forgive the preachy detours, the underwater world is odd and inventive in ways that stick.
- You read Vera Pavlovna’s strange, earnest dreams alongside the novel’s arguments about work, love, and communal life, and the result is both politically provocative and wonderfully odd. The preaching can feel heavy, but if you enjoy ideas wearing the clothes of a melodrama, Rakhmetov and company stay with you.