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Letter To Sister Benedicta (1999)

Letter To Sister Benedicta (1999)

Book Info

Author
Rating
3.62 of 5 Votes: 5
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ISBN
0099284073 (ISBN13: 9780099284079)
Language
English
Publisher
vintage

About book Letter To Sister Benedicta (1999)

This is a good read all in all, but not the best of Rose Tremain's. I have always been really impressed by her books, less so with this but then it is one of her first. The story is narrated by Ruby who is writing to a nun she remembers from her childhood in a convent school in India as she waits by the bed of her husband, paralysed by stroke. It is an interesting and absorbing story - the trouble for me was the voice of Ruby which is occasionally twee and irritating. As a heroine I found Ruby only intermittently sympathetic as at times she struck me as coy and self-pitying. Obviously, we don't have to like the characters in a book, but I think we are meant to like Ruby. The book strikes the odd false note in this respect but certainly was not dull or dislikeable. I enjoyed it up to a point, and probably would have reviewed this more generously if it were not that all her other books are much much better. I recommend any of them but especially Music and Silence or The Swimming Pool Season.

Do You like book Letter To Sister Benedicta (1999)?

When I started this book I suddenly realised that the main character, Ruby, was actually a minor character in The Road Home, which I'd read recently. In this book Ruby is 50, however, The Road Home is set 30 years later, so this may have influenced how I read it. At times reading this I found it intensely depressing, but I think it's a testament to the quality of the writing that I still wanted to read on. In the end it was ultimately uplifting and hopeful. I think I would have preferred not to have known how Ruby's life ended up 30 years later, but nonetheless I thought this was a thoroughly well-written and engaging book.
—Carol

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