The Bilbao Looking Glass (1984)

Book Info

Author

Charlotte MacLeod

Genre

Fiction

Series

kelling & bittersohn

Rating

3.87 of 5 Votes: 3

Your rating

ISBN

0380674548 (ISBN13: 9780380674541)

Language

English

Publisher

avon books (mm)

Shops

Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble

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About book The Bilbao Looking Glass (1984)

Sarah and Max deal with Sarah's Yacht club friends or rather Alexander's friends who wish to protect her from that Jewish fellow Bittersohn. Instead they decide who would be most suitable for Sarah to marry from among their number to keep her in her proper social milieu. Meanwhile Max's family are having their own difficulties with accepting Sarah.Lionel and Appie Kelling began as very simple flat characters but showed up with Lionel being more interesting and his children being better than the first meeting implied. I do dislike it when background characters are excessively simplistic and these were an interesting variant on the typical hoard of unruly children.

This entry in the series has Max proposing at irregular intervals to Sarah, who intends to say "Yes" but isn't quite ready. In the meantime they're spending the summer at her old country house surrounded by snobby yacht-club members, Max's family who view Sarah with varying degrees of enthusiasm or lack thereof, and Sarah's cousin Lionel and his four hoodlum sons. The sons, incidentally, are named after Jesse James and his gang. :) Throw in stolen paintings, Max's arrest and a transcendental colony of goat lovers, and you have another fun yarn from MacLeod, who wrote this type of story as well as anyone.

Do You like book The Bilbao Looking Glass (1984)?

It was hard to put this book down before finishing, so I didn't. Although the characters aren't as wonderful and whacky as in previous books, this book presents class consciousness (where classes aren't supposed to exit) from both sides, and it is done well. The little asides, the outright rudeness, and the all-pervasive "them" and "we" trap Sarah and Max in the middle, forcing the reader to root for the couple against both sides. There are moments when you wonder how Max and Sarah will ever get out from under everything seeking to crush their romance.
—Maria