Carmen's Books and Movies Reviews

Belial, Kitten, and Penrose (Pen) Davenport are the three best bookaneers the world has ever known. But with the advent of stricter copyright laws in the last decades of the 19th century, the loophole that has allowed them to steal literary manuscripts for profit, with some impunity, is coming to a close. The bookaneers' way of life is endangered.
Kitten has fallen victim in her search of her own Holy Grail. Only Belial and Davenport have survived, but they are about to have the duel of their lives when they travel to the islands of Samoa in the South Pacific, in search of the last novel, supposedly a masterpiece, penned by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Having read Dante Club when it was first released and being one of my all-time favorite books, when I had the opportunity to request a copy of The Last Bookaneer by Matthew Pearl, I didn't think twice. Pearl has gotten comfortable in the literary thriller genre he writes so well. Unfortunately, Dante Club, his debut novel, set the bar …

A Novel of George Sand 

Aurore Dudevant, neé Dupin (a.k.a. George Sand) was born in July, 1804, to Maurice Dupin, an aristocratic military man, and Sophie, a passionate belle with a checkered past and low social status. Maurice's mother never accepted the union between her son and Sophie, though in later years both women learned to coexist to the point of sharing the same living space.
Aurore grew up under her paternal grandmother's care, until she married Casimir Dudevant, then her best friend, when she was eighteen years old (1822). By 1831 she had been tempted once to have an extramarital affair that never consummated, and had had a one night stand from which her daughter was conceived. By then it was evident she could not tolerate her husband any longer, while he hated her, so Aurore decided to leave him and become an author in Paris, at that point rather out of necessity, to supplement her annual allowance.
Though Aurore inherited her family's fortune, her husband admini…