Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
|
Loading... Misfortune: A Novel (original 2005; edition 2006)by Wesley Stace
Work InformationMisfortune by Wesley Stace (2005)
  
No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) Je9 | Aug 10, 2021 |   ) badube | Mar 6, 2019 | Intrigue (over decades), goofiness, wordplay, rich snobs, longtime servants and friends, ballads, and books all come together to solve the mystery of Rose's origin and find the true heir to Love Hall. And it really does all neatly wrap up. I almost want to read it again so I can better catch the details in the appendix. ( ) Dreesie | Oct 17, 2017 | ) JBD1 | May 19, 2015 | This novel was a crazy amalgam of of themes and styles that worked beautifully! I just finished reading this tour-de-force a few minutes ago, and I already want to open it to the first page and read it all over again! (  ) bookwoman247 | Jan 11, 2014 |
In its premise, plot, pacing, style, and enormous cast of characters, Misfortune operates deliberately like a Dickens novel. The book begins with a foundling in a rubbish heap (a foundling!), taken home to opulent Love Hall by the bachelor Lord Geoffroy Loveall, who, because of the traumatic early death of his sister Dolores, is determined to raise the child as a girl (Rose Old), even though the child is a boy.  This gender-bending romp about a boy raised as a girl in 19th-century England--penned by musician John Wesley Harding, writing here under his real name--more than lives up to the hype it will surely, ahem, engender. Awards
Lord Loveall, heretofore heirless lord of the sprawling Love Hall, is the richest man in England. He arrives home one morning with a most unusual package - a baby that he presents as the inheritor to the family name and fortune. In honor of his beloved sister, who died young, Loveall names the baby Rose. The household, relieved at the continuation of the Loveall line, ignores the fact that this Rose has a thorn...that she is, in fact, a boy. Rose grows up with the two servant children who are her only friends, blissfully unaware of her own gender, casually hitting boundaries at Love Hall's yearly cricket game and learning to shave even as she continues to wear more and more elaborate dresses. Until, of course, the fateful day when Rose's world comes crashing down around her, and she is banished from Love Hall as an impostor by those who would claim her place as heir. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813Literature English (North America) American fictionLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.8)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English
3