francesmthompson's Reviews (976)

This left me a little startled and very inspired, a good combination.

Best read with a cup of tea and silence.

You wouldn't want to spend a vast amount of money purchasing this collection of four short stories, all inspired by real events or people or findings. Each has its own style but all four are comfortably and satisfyingly told.

Oh I hate me for doing this but I bailed. I just could not get into it. Yes, I'm a self-confessed city girl who knows nothing about falconry and luckily I've not been touched by loss or grief in any way close to the author has when she lost her dad, but I have read books on grief and on nature before and this one just didn't have the same instant magnetism...

Will hopefully pick it up again one day soon but for now, my interest in this book has flown the nest.

Terrible pun sorry.

Sobbed my (possibly a little hormonal) heart out at the end of this... Loved the beginning, found the middle a little wandering, but found the ending very satisfying which I don't think was easy to achieve in all honesty.

One of the best books I've read on depression, and has given me one of the best descriptions/explanations of the illness that I have ever read. "Depression is a cloud. You are the sky."

A must-read for anyone with any experience of depression either themselves or a loved-one.

Another reviewer describes this as a movie disguised as a book and I couldn't agree more. The deeper I got into the book, the more I felt like I was actually reading a descriptive version of a screenplay. However, I can't work out if this is a compliment or not. While the writing is not to my liking (too much telling and not enough showing) I absolutely cannot deny that I was hooked on the plot and the twists that were delivered along the way were surprising and satisfying. Would I read more by this author? Probably not. Would I recommend it to a friend? Yes, abolutely IF you like this genre and/or you're intrigued by astrophysics... or if you like reading fiction that is shamelessly gagging to be made into a Hollywood blockbuster.

Don't read this because you are single. Don't read this because you are unmarried. Don't read this because you have cats. Read this because you are FEMALE... or if you love writing/writers/literature. It's one of the most important and richly researched books I've read about women in modern society, as told with the help of five women in history, all writers of one kind or another.

My only small complaint is the title, although the author goes some way at the end to try and justify its selection. For me, this book is about so much more than being a "Spinster". It's about confronting societal and cultural norms that have come about for a multitude of reasons, and examining in closer detail how restrictive and suffocating these can be for women, knowingly or not.