Second year for Yearling

In seventh place on the 1939 bestseller list was  The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, which had occupied first place honors the previous year.
You will find my review of The Yearling listed among the 1938 bestsellers. I won’t repeat it here.
Instead tomorrow, I’ll review the #8 novel on the 1939 list, Elizabeth Page’s The Tree [...]

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Two ‘38 top books held over on 1939 list

On the 1939 bestseller list are two titles that were in the top 10 the previous year as well.
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier  held third place in 1939, up from fourth place on the 1939 bestseller list. The tale of the romantic lass who finds herself playing second fiddle to her husband’s late wife in [...]

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Peter Pan Is Grownup Delight

Peter Pan is both more serious and more funny than Disney or musicals make it appear. Barrie uses his whimsical story to ridicule childishness in all its forms.

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Several keepers on 1938 bestseller list

You may have noticed I posted only seven novels in this series on 1938 bestsellers. The 1938 bestseller list contains three novels that had also been on the 1937 list
Of the 1938 entries, none are really great literature — Howard Spring’s My Son, My Son comes closest — but there are several great yarns.
The 1938 [...]

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Action and More Make Aquila a Keeper

Action at Aquila is a Civil War novel that breaks the mold.
The plot appears predictable, but at the last minute Hervey Allen twists it to keep readers guessing. He tops off the story with a romance, and oddball characters that made me laugh out loud, and musings on how the Civil War changed America.

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The Mortal Storm Has Gale-Force Power

In The Moral Storm, Phyllis Bottome rejuvenates the tired brother-against-brother theme by putting it into the setting of Nazi Germany. The novel derives its power from the contrast between the loving concern the Nazi boys show to their Jewish stepfather and the self-absorption of their Jewish half-sister. The family is divided by politics, but united by love.

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Rebecca hasn’t lost her fascination

Rebecca is Daphne du Maurier’s most famous novel, and with good reason. …the novel takes the standard features of the Gothic mystery romance and puts them in twentieth century garb with spine-tingling success.

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Solid but Stolid Saga of Texas

And Tell of Time is the tale of a Texan, Cavin Darcy, who marries his Georgia cousin at the end of the Civil War and takes her to live on his farm on the Brazos. It takes over 30 years for Lucina to regard Texas as home. The background of And Tell of Time is much like that of Gone with the Wind. The white landowners suffer from laws that favor the blacks so the Northerners can exploit all Southerners, black and white.

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Fictional account of 1847 scandal still a sensation

As a child, Rachel Field was curious about her great aunt, Henriette Desportes, whose tombstone told the date of her death but nothing of her life. In All This, and Heaven Too, Field fleshes out the facts she later learned about Henriette’s sensational trial for murder with details she imagined.

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Awful Fascination in Sad, Wise Novel

In My Son, My Son, Howard Spring takes the Biblical tale of King David’s painful relationship with his beloved, despicable son Absalom and sets it in early 20th century England. Like the Old Testament story, Spring’s novel is a twisted tale seeped in sex, narcissism, and violence related in a matter-of-fact tone. The title makes Oliver’s fate clear. The awful fascination of the novel is watching how others react to the golden-haired schemer.

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