Book Review: The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff

Goodreads summary:

On the morning of her wedding, Pell Ridley creeps out of bed in the dark, kisses her sisters goodbye and flees — determined to escape a future that offers nothing but hard work and sorrow. She takes the only thing that truly belongs to her: Jack, a white horse, and small mute Bean who refuses to be left behind.

The road ahead is rich with longing, silence and secrets, and each encounter leads her closer to the untold story of her past. Then Pell meets a hunter, infuriating, mysterious and cold. Will he help her to find what she seeks?
With all the hallmarks of Meg Rosoff’s extraordinary writing, The Bride’s Farewell also breaks new ground for this author, in a nineteenth-century, Hardyesque setting. This is a moving story of love and lost things, with a core of deep, beautiful romance.

My thoughts and review


I was really hoping that I was going to love this because I haven't read any other of Meg Rosoff's books but I've heard good things about them and thought it must be great in order to get onto the Carnegie Medal Award shortlist 2011. It turned out that I really liked the author's writing because it was descriptive and colourful but it was the plot that let me down. This was because it had all the right ingredients to make a beautiful fairy tale like historical story: a likable and determined heroine, a idyllic countryside setting, a hint of romance and well crafted writing. I enjoyed the first chapters so I was disappointed to find not much seemed to happen after that. I just wasn't gripped by it at all and it didn't capture my imagination.

Nevertheless, the MC Pell Ridley is an independent and strong young girl who is determined to avoid the fate of her mother with endless toil and a house full of hungry little mouths. I admired her courage as she left everything she had ever known and loved on the morning of her wedding to seek a new life for herself in the city with only her magnificent white horse Jack and her mute adopted brother Bean. Pell has a admirable talent in working with horses and is hired at the Salisbury Fair to help a man pick out the best horses to buy. When he makes off without paying her and she loses both Bean and Jack, leaving her to travel cold and hungry on the open rural road. This is where the rest of the story is built on, with Pell wondering the countryside trying to restore what is hers and find shelter to survive. Soon her old feisty nature seemed to dwindle and she wears a disheartened attitude on her journey. I didn't like this sudden change in her character and gradually felt more and more disconnected and tired with her as she became rather dull.

The supposed romance with Pell and a man she meets along her journey fell completely flat for me because it seemed almost as if the romance hinted just seemed to have been put in for the sake of it because there wasn't really any and no proper development of it. I also didn't know enough about the man and what his personality was like to make a decision about whether I wanted Pell to find happiness with him.

I thought that the historical setting worked nicely but for a long way into the story it was hard to tell whether it was set in the Tudor or Victorian era (it was set in the 1850's) because there weren't many differentiating descriptions. I would have liked to have seen this further developed and made use of.

New paperback cover

I've heard The Bride's Farewell being compared to Thomas Hardy's Tess Of The D'Urbivilles which I read last month and I can see a few of the similarities that could be seen between Pell and Tess but Tess was a much more rounded and developed character. There are also similarities in the countryside setting and of the theme of a an impoverished Victorian girl finding her place in the world.

Verdict: The Bride's Farewell had a brilliant premise and could have been a book I loved but instead the story was slow moving, the plot wasn't memorable and my interest lagged towards the end. However the writing was finely crafted and and overall this book was just okay. I don't think it deserves to win the Carnegie Medal Award this year.

I struggled over what rating to give this book because I liked it more than another recent book I gave it a 2.5 but I felt that was more creative and added something fresh to its genre.

Rating: 2

I found my favourite quote of the book to show what I liked about Meg Rosoff's writing:

"For those poor souls who can only think of the terrible fear and danger of a runaway horse, think of this: a speed like water flowing over stone, a skimming sensation that hovers and dips while the world spins around and the wind drags your skin taut across your bones. You can close your eyes and lose yourself in the rhythm, because nothing you do or shout or wish for will happen until the running makes up its mind to stop. So you hold steady, balancing yourself in the wake, and unhook your mind from the everyday while you wait at the silent center of it all and hope that the feeling won't stop till you're good and ready for life to be ordinary once more.The problem being that she never was."



In My Mailbox: 10/4/11

In My Mailbox is a meme held by the lovely Kristi from The Story Siren, where bloggers share all the new books that have made it into their house each week.

What I got this week:

Montacute House by Lucy Jago (thank you Bloomsbury UK)

At first a boy’s body is discovered, then John, Cess’s best friend, disappears . . . What is the mystery behind these sinister events?

Cess works caring for the chickens at Montacute House but on her thirteenth birthday everything changes. She finds a precious locket hidden in the chicken coop and is convinced someone has placed it there for her to find. But the day is overshadowed by fear as a boy’s body is found by the river, and then John disappears. Cess is determined to find him but is soon embroiled in a plot that threatens 0her world and forces her to draw on powers she never knew she possessed, powers that will place her life in danger if they are discovered by the villagers. Witchcraft, politics and religious ambition combine in this gripping and wonderfully realised novel set in the Somerset of the 1500s.

I was really excited to have this arrive as a surprise through my letterbox from Bloomsbury and heard a lot of good things about it from bloggers when it came out in the US so I'm looking forward to reading it. 

The Prisoner of the Inquisition by Theresa Breslin (library)

 is used to basking in the pampered lifestyle being the only daughter of the town magistrate affords; she is free to roam the town as she likes, consort with the son of a nobleman and spend her days studying the arts. Saulo's family have fallen on hard times, and when his father is hanged for an assault on Zarita he did not commit and Saulo is hauled off to be a slave at sea, Saulo swears revenge. But when Zarita's mother dies in childbirth, and the formidable and frightening Inquisition arrives in the area, a curtain of suspicion and brutality comes down on her old life for good. Saulo may believe that Zarita is his sworn enemy, but in a time when the whole of Spain is in turmoil, are him and Zarita each other's only hope of survival?

I've had this on my TBR list for a while as I've read and liked several other Theresa Breslin novels but it's been shortlisted for the 2011 Carnegie Medal Award (click on the link to visit  my post about it), which my school book club  followso I finally got round to taking a copy out the library. The paperback has just been released and it's so much prettier than the hardback on the right, which probably has something to do with why I put off reading it for so long. (I know, I know- don't judge a book by its cover!)

Chocolate Cake With Hitler by Emma Craigie (library)

A fictionalised account of the life of Helga, twelve year old daughter of Jospeh Goebbels, the Nazi Party's Head of Propoganda. Helg's childhood as the eldest of five children in Germnay's First Family has been a gilded one, accompanying her parents to and rallies, moving between the city and their idyllic country estate. But the war has changed everything. And now, as defeat closes in on the Germans, Helga must move into a bunker at the heart of Berlin with her family and key members of the crumbling Nazi leadership- to e with her beloved Hitler.

My mum read this and really enjoyed and I love WW2/ Hitler books so it sounds like it should be a good read. It was also longlisted for the Carnegie Medal.

The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff (library)



On the morning of her wedding, Pell Ridley creeps out of bed in the dark, kisses her sisters goodbye and flees — determined to escape a future that offers nothing but hard work and sorrow. She takes the only thing that truly belongs to her: Jack, a white horse, and small mute Bean who refuses to be left behind.

The road ahead is rich with longing, silence and secrets, and each encounter leads her closer to the untold story of her past. Then Pell meets a hunter, infuriating, mysterious and cold. Will he help her to find what she seeks?

With all the hallmarks of Meg Rosoff’s extraordinary writing, The Bride’s Farewell also breaks new ground for this author, in a nineteenth-century, Hardyesque setting. This is a moving story of love and lost things, with a core of deep, beautiful romance.

This is also another one shortlisted on the Carnegie and I've already read it so a review should be up soon. I can tell you it wasn't as good as I was expecting. I'm not too sure what to think of the new paperback cover above because the pastel covers are fairly pretty but it doesn't tell you as much about the book as in the hardback cover and is less original.

What did you get in your mailbox this week?