Tranby Quirke is an adventurous woman. Well, in her mind anyway. In reality, she is a very lonely woman who had lived her life avoiding any sort of real connection with others. She works hard in her teaching career and, behind the scenes, with the suffragist movement. She is very dramatic in her actions and in her created adventures, which do fill much of the book.

After experiencing the loss of her first love, even if it was a very brief affair, at 12 years old, Tranby locked that part of herself away. The pain of the loss was just not worth letting herself feel. At 34, she is a spinster who teaches young women how to entertain guests and be a proper wife. This is where she meets 19 year old Lysette.

Lysette and Tranby connect and fall in love pretty quickly and I think that it's believable in this scenario due to the mental states of the women involved. Tranby has denied herself any real human connection, besides with her father who died four years earlier, and Lysette is married to an abusive man. Lysette finds herself very much attracted to the older, more worldly and confident Tranby.

This is not the usual book that I've found at Bold Strokes. The language is more poetic and dramatic, as it's written from Tranby's point of view and set in 1909 London. And Tranby, herself, is very dramatic. I enjoyed the book but I could see how others may not be expecting the style and find themselves a bit disappointed. I wasn't and found it a pleasant surprise. ( )

The Remarkable Journey of Miss Tranby Quirke is the kind of book you need a few days to think about before you understand if you truly like it or not. I guess that sounds a bit bizarre or indecisive, but the truth is Elizabeth Ridley's period piece, while extremely well-written, deeply touching and downright beautiful at times, leaves me a bit uneasy.

Tranby and Lysette, surely two of the most unlikely women to ever fall in love with each other, are each so severely messed up emotionally (in their own unique ways) that I'm not sure either should be seeking any relationship, much less one with each other. They are both also wonderful and caring ladies, but it is 1909, after all, and so much is already on their plate that time and circumstance threaten to crack it beyond repair.

Maybe I'm reading way too much into everything that happens, but I also question what is real and what is not and if our narrator Miss Tranby can even be trusted. Things are so wispy and fragile by the end, the reader cannot help but feel sad rather than hopeful. The Remarkable Journey of Miss Tranby Quirke is definitely a solid read...whether it's a solid romance is an entirely different matter. ( )