{"id":3573,"date":"2021-10-20T09:02:51","date_gmt":"2021-10-20T13:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/?p=3573"},"modified":"2021-10-20T09:02:53","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T13:02:53","slug":"book-review-the-widow-of-bath-by-margot-bennett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/20\/book-review-the-widow-of-bath-by-margot-bennett\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review\/\/The Widow of Bath by Margot Bennett"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I am a little behind on reviewing the British Library Crime Classics I have received but that is fine with me because it gives me the perfect excuse to sit and binge read a few in a row. I finished The Widow of Bath <\/em>last weekend and greatly enjoyed it. The plot was more than a little implausible but the writing style was clever and witty and I can forgive a lot if the writing is good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is the blurb from the back of the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hugh Everton was intent on nothing more than quietly drinking in the second-rate hotel he found himself in on England’s south coast – and then in walked his old flame Lucy and her new husband and ex-judge, Gregory Bath. Entreated by Lucy to join her party for an evening back at the Bath residence, Hugh is powerless to resist, but when the night ends with the judge’s inexplicable murder he is pitched back into a world of chaos and crime – a world he had tried to escape for good. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Hugh is a very conflicted character. He has a past he is trying to escape. He has been in love with two of the women associated with the murder. He doesn’t always do the right thing and sometimes he is weak. Then, in the next chapter he is fighting one of the bad guys and jumping into the back of a van with no idea where it is going or who is in it. I didn’t find him particularly believable but I did find him interesting. I wanted to know more about him and why he is the kind of person he is. Several of the other characters felt a bit interchangeable and I had to go back a few pages and check who was who. That could be because I was reading this late at night and not because it was actually confusing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I enjoyed the descriptions of an English seaside resort. It had a stronger sense of place than I was expecting. Here is a description of the town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rigid exclusion of the usual amenities had kept the town quieter than its neighbors. There was no cinema, the bus service was unreliable, instead of a car park there were many notices forbidding the parking of cars, the railway station was inconveniently placed. Nature had come to the help of the citizens by providing only the thinnest strip of gritty sand with a steeply shelving beach, attractive to suicidal infants, but discouraging to the normal parent. The ring of brittle cliffs that surrounded the bay kept most ofthe houses at a decent distance from the sea. A small, safe harbour brought a few sailing enthusiasts to the town: these were welcomed, as they tended to put the rents up and keep the rates at a comfortable level. A generation of rich people had built large, comfortable houses around the bay, but time and income tax had seen their defeat, and the biggest of the houses had turned into schools, nursing homes, and those dreary, padded retreats known as private hotels. Meanwhile, everyone was able to congratulate everyone else, in the Tudor, Queen Anne, and occasional post-war, coffee shops that the place was unspoilt, and that it was still possible to hire a horse and ride through the woods, although not for long, for behind this respectable English dream the small mean houses grew like thistles in an abandoned field.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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The plot made little impression on me. I know the judge was murdered and his body disappeared. I know Hugh spent his time suspecting the waiters in the hotel and resisting Lucy’s beauty. I also know I wish that Margot Bennett had forgone the convoluted plotting and simply written a novel. I would have read and enjoyed it. I read and enjoyed this as well. Just don’t expect a plot that makes a lot of sense. But then, a nonsensical mystery novel is sometimes just what you need when you pick up your book at 11:00 p.m. after a hard day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My thanks to the British Library for the review copy of this book. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am a little behind on reviewing the British Library Crime Classics I have received but that is fine with me because it gives me the perfect excuse to sit and binge read a few in a row. I finished The Widow of Bath last weekend and greatly enjoyed it. The plot was more than a little implausible but the writing style was clever and witty and I can forgive a lot if the writing is good. Here is the blurb from the back of the book. Hugh Everton was intent on nothing more than quietly drinking in the second-rate hotel he found himself in on England’s south coast – and then in walked his old flame Lucy and her new husband and ex-judge, Gregory Bath. Entreated by Lucy to join her party for an evening back at the Bath residence, Hugh is powerless to resist, but when the night ends with the judge’s inexplicable murder he is pitched back into a world of chaos and crime – a world he had tried to escape for good. Hugh is a very conflicted character. He has a past he is trying to escape. He has been in love with two of the women associated with the murder. He doesn’t always do the right thing and sometimes he is weak. Then, in the next chapter he is fighting one of the bad guys and jumping into the back of a van with no idea where it is going or who is in it. I didn’t find him particularly believable but I did find him interesting. I wanted to know more about him and why he is the kind of person he is. Several of the other characters felt a bit interchangeable and I had to go back a few pages and check who was who. That could be because I was reading this late at night and not because it was actually confusing. I enjoyed the descriptions of an English seaside resort. It had a stronger sense of place than I was expecting. Here is a description of the town. Rigid exclusion of the usual amenities had kept the town quieter than its neighbors. There was no cinema, the bus service was unreliable, instead of a car park there were many notices forbidding the parking of cars, the railway station was inconveniently placed. Nature had come to the help of the citizens by providing only the thinnest strip of gritty sand with a steeply shelving beach, attractive to suicidal infants, but discouraging to the normal parent. The ring of brittle cliffs that surrounded the bay kept most ofthe houses at a decent distance from the sea. A small, safe harbour brought a few sailing enthusiasts to the town: these were welcomed, as they tended to put the rents up and keep the rates at a comfortable level. A generation of rich people had built large, comfortable houses around the bay, but time and income tax had seen their defeat, and the biggest of the houses had turned into schools, nursing homes, and those dreary, padded retreats known as private hotels. Meanwhile, everyone was able to congratulate everyone else, in the Tudor, Queen Anne, and occasional post-war, coffee shops that the place was unspoilt, and that it was still possible to hire a horse and ride through the woods, although not for long, for behind this respectable English dream the small mean houses grew like thistles in an abandoned field. The plot made little impression on me. I know the judge was murdered and his body disappeared. I know Hugh spent his time suspecting the waiters in the hotel and resisting Lucy’s beauty. I also know I wish that Margot Bennett had forgone the convoluted plotting and simply written a novel. I would have read and enjoyed it. I read and enjoyed this as well. Just don’t expect a plot that makes a lot of sense. But then, a nonsensical mystery novel is sometimes just what you need when you pick up your book at 11:00 p.m. after a hard day. My thanks to the British Library for the review copy of this book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3573"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3576,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3573\/revisions\/3576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}