Bibliokitty

What drew me to Isola is its basis in historical record of a sixteenth-century French noblewoman who survived being marooned on an uninhabited island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence for two years before she was rescued and returned to France. Like the author, I wondered how the heck this woman survived two Canadian winters mostly on her own in the sixteenth-century. Unfortunately, we will never know the true account of Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval’s survival, but I found Goodman’s fictional account of Marguerite’s story compelling.

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Kristin Hannah’s novels get a lot of love online, so I have been thinking about reading one for awhile but have been hesitant to because I find over-hyped books do not live up to my expectations. Then I found this beautiful 10th anniversary edition of The Nightingale with sprayed edges in Costco and had to buy it. Damn, this book is good. It actually made me cry, which does not happen very often when I read books.

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Like Pip Williams’s first novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words, The Bookbinder is great for fans of historical fiction. You should definitely read it if you have read The Dictionary of Lost Words. The Bookbinder is also set in Oxford during the early twentieth century and focuses on the suffrage movement in England and WWI. Some characters from The Dictionary of Lost Words make an appearance in this novel.

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