vintageanchor: The 10 best historical novels (As chosen by William Skidelsky, The Guardian/Observer books editor)… Property by Valerie Martin: “Martin’s 2003 novel is a devastatingly honest, sometimes brutal portrait of life on a slave plantation in the 1830s. The narrator is Manon, a young woman trapped in a loveless marriage to her boorish, plantation-owner husband. Manon rebels against her matrimonial subjugation, and acts with bravery in her efforts to improve her lot. In some ways, she’s a feminist pioneer. Yet she’s incapable of applying the same logic to the greater injustice of slavery, whose propriety she never questions. Martin’s novel, shot through with irony, remains somewhat underrated, despite winning the Orange prize.” More here.
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vintageanchor:

The 10 best historical novels (As chosen by William Skidelsky, The Guardian/Observer books editor)…

Property by Valerie Martin: “Martin’s 2003 novel is a devastatingly honest, sometimes brutal portrait of life on a slave plantation in the 1830s. The narrator is Manon, a young woman trapped in a loveless marriage to her boorish, plantation-owner husband. Manon rebels against her matrimonial subjugation, and acts with bravery in her efforts to improve her lot. In some ways, she’s a feminist pioneer. Yet she’s incapable of applying the same logic to the greater injustice of slavery, whose propriety she never questions. Martin’s novel, shot through with irony, remains somewhat underrated, despite winning the Orange prize.”

More here.