I sort of hate it when I read a book at the wrong time and unfortunately I just wasn’t in the mood for a historical saga when I’ve been reading quite a few of them lately. Saying that this one also provides an interesting and original twist.
The narrator of this novel is Beigh Masters , an asset hunter who has dedicated a good part of her life to studying the (Fictional) 17th century character Hannah Easton. An independent woman who lived in Salem, England and India. Easton is a bit of a misfit who is constantly on the lookout for freedom and despite the fact that on her journeys (with her seafaring first husband) she meets an array of interesting people she is still out-of-place. The only times he achieves what she wishes is by marrying royalty and changing her name.
Masters finds a lot of links between her life and Easton’s and this all comes together when Beigh’s boyfriend, Venn creates a virtual reality programme which allows her to go into the past and see Hannah life and understand some loose ends in her (Easton’s) life.
Apparently this is a re-telling of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter, a book which I haven’t read ( but I assume it will be in the list) so that was one reason why I didn’t love this book and as I mentioned earlier I just wasn’t in the mood but there are a lot of admirable qualities and the writing style is quirky but engaging.
The Bobsphere 