Having loved Girl With a Pearl Earring, I was quite disappointed in this book. For one thing, William Blake was very much a supporting character and I learned very little about him and his work. Also, none of the characters were very endearing. A decent picture of a certain element of life in the late eighteenth century I suppose. ( )

Have lost my ability to play this, so donated to HAWL Library.

FROM AMAZON: A poor family moves to 18th-century London, where the father has been offered a job as a carpenter for a circus. His children befriend a young girl who introduces them to the great city. Their neighbor is none other than the real-life poet, William Blake.
Best-selling author Tracy Chevalier also wrote Girl with a Pearl Earring. ( )

3.5 stars

When Masie and Jem’s (both teenagers) family moves from the country to London in 1792, they are fairly unprepared for big city life. They end up living next door to a man, Philip Astley (and his son), who run a circus, and another neighbour is poet and printer (publisher), William Blake. A fast friend (especially to Jem) comes in outgoing neighbour, Maggie. This is during the time of the Revolution in France, which does have an effect on the people in London.

This was another slow moving book, but overall it was good. It took a bit to learn the characters, especially with Maggie and Maisie – I think I had to sometimes stop and think for a minute every time one or the other was newly introduced into a scene. The story is mostly from Jem and Maggie’s points of view. Apparently Philip Astley was also a real person and created the first circus. ( )

It captured my attention until about the last 1/4th of the book...then it became depressing and almost disjointed to me. I was extremely unsatisfied with how it ended. I hate when you know there are only a few pages left to go in a book and you start thinking there is not enough space for things to be resolved satisfactorily...and this is how this ended. It seems Chevalier used up all her steam and talent before the book ended.
Other than that, a great period piece; I felt as if I were in London in the late 1700's with all her detail and dialect. ( )

I have truly liked other books by Chevalier, so I found this one a bit disappointing. I never got involved in the characters or felt like I knew them or cared what happened to them. It was far too much of an outside-looking in story for me. It seemed false to weave Blake into this novel, as if she couldn't proceed without a historic figure and she had picked him out of a hat. ( )