The Carlyles, and me, at Home

I wrote about books that rapture us before, specifically about Misery. I don't think much of the term 'un-put-down-able' and even less do I think of its bandied over-use from rags to supposedly reputable broadsheets but, on occasion, one can think of nothing better to describe a gripping read. Yet, it may come as a slight surprise that I may be thinking of such a description for a book that isn't a thriller, nor a horror, nor one of those fast-paced children's novels whose chapters always end with a cliffhanger, like an episode of The Bold and The Beautiful. Said book is The Carlyles at Home which I picked up at Sandoe Books (which I love, more on it another time) following a visit to the Carlyles' own home in Chelsea. A Chelsea Interior by Robert Tait But I should really make time for a digression at this point. It would be disingenuous and not a little bit arrogant of me to expect to slide back into a writing routine on here without at least acknowledging that my life changed drastically over the past year. When I last wrote in August 2012 I was, in some inadequate form, 'preparing myself for grief', except I soon discovered one cannot prepare for grief at all, not even when you've grieved many times before. Oddly, each grief is different and yet so much of it is instantaneously recognisable. In my desperate googling of 'coping with grief' I was doubly-hurt and stricken to find... Read more →