Friday Book Snippets combining Book Beginnings on Friday and the Friday 56, is co-hosted by Anne@HeadFullofBooks and Olivia at Bemused and Bookish.

Directions: Share two snippets (a sentence or short paragraph) from a) the book’s opening and b) page 56 (or another page) from the book you are currently reading. No spoilers, please.

This week I’m featuring Pinkerton’s Sister by Peter Rushforth.

1st snippet, Chapter 1 :

The mad woman in the attic was standing at the window.

Something about the slant of her body – slimped , drooping to one side – gave her a look of Marianna-like weariness,

2nd snippet, page 113:

Time ceased to exist, and she became one with what she read, what she contemplated, within the work of art, like her namesake Alice within the looking glass. It happened every time she studied Linnaeus’s painting in the school room. The water in the ewer was still hot, steam rising. It must be like dreaming was supposed to be, when time was concentrated into a few seconds, or like drowning, when a life passed before the eyes in moments. Maggie Tulliver must have experienced this, clasped in Tom’s arms as she and her brother sank to their deaths beneath the flood water: beating her doll’s wooden head against the pillars, cutting her hair jaggedly, Behaving Worse than She Expected, Trying to Run Away from her Shadow …

Description from the book cover:

Though her neighbours consider her a simpleton, in reality Alice’s mind is razor sharp. She is thirty five years of age, and all she has is her books. Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe are her inspirations: Jane Eyre, Maggie Tulliver her companions, nourishing her lonely life. And as she moves through the witless world around her, observing its prejudices, its shallow culture, its hatred of truth, she transports those who belittle her into these books, where they can no longer hide, forced to reveal their true characters.

Twenty five years in the making, heartbreakingly funny, fiercely intelligent Pinkerton’s Sister is an extraordinary work of imagination, about imagination.

My thoughts:

I first read this book in October 2005 before I began writing this blog. At that time I decided I wanted to know more about it and a Google Search led me to Book World’s Blog where Sandra had written a post about it (I can no longer find her blog to thank her.) I had not heard about blogs before, but I was hooked and using her blogroll I discovered more book blogs. I decided to write one myself mainly to keep a record of what I’d read, but it took me another year before I plucked up the courage to make a start in July 2006 with a very short post and another nine months before I really got going in April 2007. I’d just left work and had more time to read and write about books, so I began this blog partly to help me remember what I’ve read and also to extend the pleasure of reading. And so ‘BooksPlease’ was born.

In November 2019 I wrote this about Pinkerton’s Sister: It’s a bizarre story seen through the main character’s, Alice’s eyes, which because she lives in a world of books is a very strange place indeed. It’s funny, well, ludicrous at times, full of literary and musical references and I got lost in it for hours.

Now, I want to re-read it!