Passion Book

This book is done a great disservice by its cover, which makes it look like a standard bodice-ripper. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's not what this is. In fact, my dad was looking to buy me books for Christmas and he told me he'd seen this in the store, but the cover made him think that this wasn't the book I wanted. But it was! A fascinating and incredibly *full* book about the women in the Byron-Shelley circle. Very well-written, I loved the structure and the ways in which the narrative voices shifted, from close limited POVs to sections written in the style of the time in which the book is set to parts where certain characters talked directly to the reader. An excellent look at the strictures placed on the lives of these women, how they defied them, and the effects on that defiance on the rest of their lives. My favorite portions, I think, were the parts about Fanny Brawne, partly because I've always found the life of Keats so sad, but also because in many ways Fanny is portrayed as the most normal or ordinary woman -- no great talent or acts of insanity or desperation inspired by love that would cause a commotion -- but for all that, perhaps because of that and her own understanding of herself and her life, I found her story the most affecting. Wonderful.