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Lädt ... Stars Across the Ocean (2017)von Kimberley Freeman
   Books Read in 2018 (1,248) Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch.  anzlitlovers | Oct 27, 2017 |  keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
1874: Only days before she is to leave the foundling home where she grew up, Agnes Resolute discovers that, as a baby, she had been abandoned with a small token of her mother: a unicorn button. Agnes always believed her mother had been too poor to keep her, but after working as a laundress in the home she recognises the button as belonging to Genevieve Breckby, the beautiful and headstrong daughter of a local noble family. Agnes had seen Genevieve once, in the local village, and had never forgotten her. Despite having no money, Agnes will risk everything in a quest that will take her from the bleak moors of northern England to the harsh streets of London, then on to Paris and Ceylon. As Agnes follows her mother's trail, she makes choices that could cost her dearly. Finally, in Australia, she tracks Genevieve down. But is Genevieve capable of being the mother Agnes hopes she will be? Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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1
Stars Across the Ocean is badged as commercial women’s fiction on the blurb, and Kimberley Freeman is the pseudonym of Kim Wilkins, a prolific and award winning author across many genres who is also a teacher of creative writing at the University of Queensland. She is very popular at Goodreads, where this and her other novels have pages and pages of 5 star ratings.
In an academic paper called ‘Popular genres and the Australian literary community: the case of fantasy fiction (2008), Wilkins analyses the way the literary community fails to pay attention to fiction outside the ‘genre’ of ‘Australian literary realism’. Amongst other things she makes the point that:
Wilkins makes a convincing case for the way that commercial fiction gets little in the way of reviews despite its enduring popularity and commercial success, (though whether this is still true since the advent of the Australian Women Writers Challenge and the proliferation of online book review blogs, I can’t say). But prompted by my reading of Stars Across the Oceans, I’d hazard a guess that there are/were two reasons for this: firstly, most reviewers (whose credibility requires that they be widely read and therefore able to make informed judgements) probably don’t enjoy writing negative reviews and secondly, there really isn’t much to say about the formulaic writing of comfort reading a.k.a. beach reading. Still, I’ll have a go, and perhaps bump up the stats…
Stars Across the Ocean is framed around two ‘indomitable’ women, one in the 21st century who is coming to terms with her mother’s decline into dementia and a failing marriage, and the other an impoverished Victorian era foundling who, in a highly improbable tale, seeks her birth mother in a quest that takes her from the north of England to London, Paris, Colombo and Melbourne. These two narratives link together as Tori (Victoria) sorts out her historian mother’s research papers and finds the scattered pages of the unmarried mother’s confessional letter to her daughter. Two love stories emerge with the requisite satisfyingly romantic conclusions.
The book is 447 pages long but I had worked out the plot ‘twist’ half way through, (page 265, I may have been a little slow) so the rest of the book was an exercise in observing how the author had managed to avoid overtly revealing it till the last chapters. (Mostly achieved by laboriously not referring to a certain character by name).
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/10/28/stars-across-the-ocean-by-kimberley-freeman/ (