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Melanie Benjamin

Författare till The Aviator's Wife

12 verk 6,673 medlemmar 748 recensioner 8 favoritmärkta

Om författaren

Melanie Benjamin was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and attended college there. She has been an avid reader all her life and firmly believes that a lifetime of reading is the best education a writer can have. After college Melanie married and moved to the Chicago area to raise her children, but the visa mer desire to write was always there in the background. Soon she began writing for local magazines and newspapers before venturing into fiction. As Melanie Hauser she published two contemporary novels. Now writing as Melanie Benjamin, she's incorporated her passion for history and biography into ALICE I HAVE BEEN her first historical novel; THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MRS. TOM THUMB is her second, and was published July 2011. Her book,The Aviator's Wife, made the New York Times bestseller list in 2013. The Swans of Fifth Avenue made the iBooks best seller list in 2016. Melanie and her family still live in the Chicago area where she enjoys writing, taking long walks, and gardening. (Bowker Author Biography) visa färre
Foto taget av: credit Todd Rennels

Serier

Verk av Melanie Benjamin

The Aviator's Wife (2013) 1,790 exemplar
Alice I Have Been: A Novel (2010) 1,568 exemplar
The Swans of Fifth Avenue (2016) 1,025 exemplar
The Girls in the Picture (2018) 478 exemplar
The Children's Blizzard (2021) 408 exemplar
Mistress of the Ritz (2019) 392 exemplar
Grand Central: Original Stories of Postwar Love and Reunion (2014) — Bidragsgivare — 126 exemplar
California Golden (2023) 93 exemplar
Hollywood Boulevard (2018) 3 exemplar
Żona lotnika (2013) 1 exemplar

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The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin i Early Reviewers (april 2013)

Recensioner

A fictionalized account of the life of Alice Pleasance Hargreaves, nee Liddell, the woman generally supposed to be the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland. Her childhood friendship with Charles Dodgson, her brief romance with Prince Leopold, and her eventual marriage to Reginald Hargreaves are all part of this novel, but the thread that runs through the whole thing is the question of whether Dodgson behaved inappropriately towards her, and what caused the sudden break between him and the Liddell family when Alice was 11 years old.

This was a fascinating, sometimes uncomfortable read, skirting the edges of the historical record and playing around in the hazy places left by destroyed letters and missing diaries. It sent me down many Wikipedia rabbit holes (yes, see what I did there), and I feel like I learned a lot about several Victorian figures and the Oxford of the mid-1800s. I was also freshly irritated at Victorian social mores as embodied in Alice's mother and older sister, just as the author intended. If you enjoy reading about this period, or like to look behind the curtain at the creation of beloved literary classics, I would recommend this book to you.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
foggidawn | 149 andra recensioner | Mar 11, 2024 |
Author Melanie Benjamin has taken a real-life incident - a horrific blizzard that hit Nebraska and the Dakota Territory on January 12, 1888 - and built characters based on oral histories and newspaper accounts from the time to tell its story.  My children's Scandinavian ancestors had settled in North Dakota by 1886, so I have to wonder if they experienced this storm.  Beautiful weather earlier in the day had people out and about in light winter clothing, and they were surprised by the storm.

The Children's Blizzard (one of the names the storm came to be called) has four main narrators.  Sisters Gerda and Raina Olsen are young schoolteachers, 18 and 16 respectively.  Gerda is teaching near Yankton in the southeast corner of the Dakota Territory.  Raina is closer to their family's home in the northeast corner of Nebraska, but far enough away that she needs to room and board with a family closer to the school, the Pedersons.

Anette Pederson, despite her surname, is really an overworked and mistreated servant in the Pederson household - sold by her mother.  And Gavin Woodson is a newspaperman (really a propagandist for the railroad) in Omaha.  There are also a couple chapters told from the viewpoints of Anna Pederson, Anette's boss, and of Ollie Tennant, a black bar owner in Omaha.

The first part of the book is about the storm itself, and its immediate aftermath.  The second part follows the main characters some years into the future.  This part could have been shorter, and there are some distracting and unnecessary side stories throughout the book that, in my opinion, could have been left out.  Nevertheless, I'm giving it more stars than I would have to offset the downrating by an anti-"woke" reviewer here.

In her author's note, Benjamin provides some additional context, and cites her sources.  She notes that Raina "is loosely based on the real-life heroine Minnie Freeman," and the "character of Anette Pedersen is based on another survivor, Lena Woebbecke" (page 443).  I think parts of Gerda's experience were based on those of Etta Shattuck and Lois Royce, but sadly Gerda suffered from the tendency of others to blame and ostracize those who make poor decisions in situations that aren't entirely under their control.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
riofriotex | 41 andra recensioner | Jan 30, 2024 |
KIRKUS REVIEWBiographical novel of Anne Morrow and her troubled marriage to pioneering aviator Charles Lindbergh.Anne, self-effacing daughter of a suffragette and an ambassador, is surprised when Charles, already a celebrity thanks to his first trans-Atlantic flight in 1927, asks her¥instead of her blonde, outgoing older sister ElisabethÂ¥to go flying with him. And it is Anne whom Charles will marry. At first, the glamorous couple?s life consists of flights all over the world: Anne becomes a pilot and navigator and Charles? indispensable sidekick. However, when in 1932 the Lindberghs' first child is kidnapped from his nursery, the resulting press furor almost destroys Anne. In addition to her grief over her lost firstborn, a grief that Lindy doesn?t appear to share, Anne suffers the downside of fame as public adulation turns to prurient sensationalism. The couple takes refuge abroad, where they enjoy the orderly routine and docile press of the Hitler regime, as long as Charles is willing to accept a Nazi medal and attend rallies. However, Kristallnacht proves too much even for Lindbergh?s anti-Semitism, and he and Anne return to the States as war threatens. As more children arrive, Anne is beginning to bridle at Charles? domineering ways, however the aspiring author is too insecure to contradict him even as he offends her liberal friends and family by siding with right-wing groups who claim that the Jews are trying to force America into war. At Charles? behest, and against her own principles, she pens The Wave of the Future (1940), an isolationist screed which renders her anathema to the intelligentsia: Even her alma mater, Smith College, disowns her. In 1974, after 47 years of wedlock, Anne must decide whether to finally confront her husband. Although the portrayal of such a passive character could easily turn tepid, Benjamin maintains interest, even suspense, as readers wonder when Anne?s healthy rebellious instincts will burst the bonds of her dutiful deference.A thoughtful examination of the forces which shaped the author of Gift from the Sea.Pub Date: Jan. 15th, 2013ISBN: 978-0-345-52867-4Page count: 416ppPublisher: DelacorteReview Posted Online: Dec. 3rd, 2012… (mer)
 
Flaggad
bentstoker | 166 andra recensioner | Jan 26, 2024 |
I'm not sure what the author intended when writing this. Were we meant to see Anne Morrow Lindbergh as a sympathetic character or as a privileged, shallow, weak woman? I've never read anything complimentary about Charles Lindbergh and there wasn't anything new here to change my mind. But at the end of this book, I also disliked Anne.
 
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ellink | 166 andra recensioner | Jan 22, 2024 |

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Associerade författare

Kristin Hannah Introduction
Sarah McCoy Contributor
Erica Robuck Contributor
Sarah Jio Contributor
Amanda Hodgkinson Contributor
Jenna Blum Contributor
Kristina McMorris Contributor
Alyson Richman Contributor
Pam Jenoff Contributor
Karen White Contributor
Kim Mai Guest Narrator, Reader
Erica Feberwee Translator
Paul Boehmer Narrator
Marc Burckhardt Cover artist
Susan Turner Designer
Mathew Brady Photographer
Gabrielle Bordwin Cover designer
Cathy Stancil Cover artist

Statistik

Verk
12
Medlemmar
6,673
Popularitet
#3,668
Betyg
3.8
Recensioner
748
ISBN
116
Språk
9
Favoritmärkt
8

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