The Bride's Farewell
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Review
"It's not often you come across a children's book as richly detailed and layered as this...Meg Rosoff is a wonderful, captivating writer - her evocation of place and time are pitch perfect. 5 *****" --Daily Telegraph
"Lose yourself in Meg Rosoff's 'The Bride's Farewell', a wildly inventive romantic adventure set in the New Forest, full of mythical tales, featuring a hunter who turns out to be a Mr Darcy type. Now that truly is escapism." --Red Magazine Red Magazine
"Another shift in emphasis for this always revelatory author as she illuminates the lives of the rural poor in the world of Hardy's Wessex... it is not necessary to love horses, but you probably will after reading it." -- The Bookseller The Bookseller
"A poetically charged romance, full of thorny emotional dilemmas... With more than a nod to Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Meg Rosoff has created a feisty 19th-century heroine whose troubles and travails are strikingly salient in the world of modern romance." --Marie Claire Marie Clare
"An engaging, impeccably-written novel, it tells a feminist story of a feisty independence, set against a rural, patriarchal background."
--Independent on Sunday Independent on Sunday --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
"Lose yourself in Meg Rosoff's 'The Bride's Farewell', a wildly inventive romantic adventure set in the New Forest, full of mythical tales, featuring a hunter who turns out to be a Mr Darcy type. Now that truly is escapism." --Red Magazine Red Magazine
"Another shift in emphasis for this always revelatory author as she illuminates the lives of the rural poor in the world of Hardy's Wessex... it is not necessary to love horses, but you probably will after reading it." -- The Bookseller The Bookseller
"A poetically charged romance, full of thorny emotional dilemmas... With more than a nod to Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Meg Rosoff has created a feisty 19th-century heroine whose troubles and travails are strikingly salient in the world of modern romance." --Marie Claire Marie Clare
"An engaging, impeccably-written novel, it tells a feminist story of a feisty independence, set against a rural, patriarchal background."
--Independent on Sunday Independent on Sunday --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Pell Ridley will captivate the readers of this book."
-- "The Globe and Mail
"
"Rosoff specializes in feisty heroines, and her main character here, Pell Ridley, is no exception."
"-- The Guardian" (UK)
"Meg Rosoff is a wonderful, captivating writer--her evocation of place and time are pitch-perfect."
"-- Daily Telegraph" (UK)
"As exhilarating as a ride across the moors, Rosoff's fourth novel is rich in the emotional landscape of the untamed female heart. . . . Rosoff's vivid, pared-down style brings it closer to a kind of western . . . every sentence is crafted and weighted with beauty, but it's the intelligence and shaping sensibility with which the story is told that make it something special."
"-- The Times" (London)
"Rosoff specializes in feisty heroines, and her main character here, Pell Ridley, is no exception.... Rosoff never patronises her readership or succumbs to the desire to make goodness seem simple: her world is as morally ambig --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
-- "The Globe and Mail
"
"Rosoff specializes in feisty heroines, and her main character here, Pell Ridley, is no exception."
"-- The Guardian" (UK)
"Meg Rosoff is a wonderful, captivating writer--her evocation of place and time are pitch-perfect."
"-- Daily Telegraph" (UK)
"As exhilarating as a ride across the moors, Rosoff's fourth novel is rich in the emotional landscape of the untamed female heart. . . . Rosoff's vivid, pared-down style brings it closer to a kind of western . . . every sentence is crafted and weighted with beauty, but it's the intelligence and shaping sensibility with which the story is told that make it something special."
"-- The Times" (London)
"Rosoff specializes in feisty heroines, and her main character here, Pell Ridley, is no exception.... Rosoff never patronises her readership or succumbs to the desire to make goodness seem simple: her world is as morally ambig --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Picture
On the morning of her wedding, Pell leaves her bed before any of her family wakes. She gathers her belongings, lays out her wedding dress and leaves. Taking her horse, Jack and her mute brother Bean, who refuses to be left behind, she abandons the life of misery and servitude that she saw her mother lead after marriage. A few years of hardship and motherhood before an inevitable early death is not her idea of a golden future, so she has decided break free. The trio head for the town of Salisbury and the huge horse fair where Pell hopes to find work. Things don't turn out quite like she planned and before long she's not only penniless but has also lost her brother and horse. What follows is a long and exhausting journey to somehow retrieve them. On her travels she comes across a taciturn poacher called Dogman and before long is living in his cowshed. Romance blooms when he finds her injured after being beaten. But with Bean still lost and more tragedies heading her way, there is little chance of rest for Pell who has a harsh lesson to learn; sometimes your decisions can have unforeseen and terrible consequences.
As usual, Meg Rosoff has crafted a beautifully written story. At times it is so realistic you almost feel like you're standing at Pell's shoulder. You can also expect plenty of twists and turns to the plot with a rather mysterious gypsy woman holding the key to the final conclusion. In fact, the plot is so intertwined that most events are sparked by the same few characters who are all frailly linked together.
There is a beautiful and yet serene love story to The Bride's Farewell. If you're expecting passionate embraces and agonised feelings then you will be disappointed as with all the tragedies that occur in her life, Pell takes everything on the chin. Despite the story being very sad in places, it never falls into bleakness and is more often than not a bittersweet experience.
A strong moral aspect of the book highlights the small mindedness of others as many lead bitter enclosed lives, resenting those who have the courage to make something better of themselves.
There is a real gem hidden here which will grow on you in rather a disquieting way. It works on you in the reading, and it could take a few days before you realise just how much you enjoyed it.
On the morning of her wedding, Pell leaves her bed before any of her family wakes. She gathers her belongings, lays out her wedding dress and leaves. Taking her horse, Jack and her mute brother Bean, who refuses to be left behind, she abandons the life of misery and servitude that she saw her mother lead after marriage. A few years of hardship and motherhood before an inevitable early death is not her idea of a golden future, so she has decided break free. The trio head for the town of Salisbury and the huge horse fair where Pell hopes to find work. Things don't turn out quite like she planned and before long she's not only penniless but has also lost her brother and horse. What follows is a long and exhausting journey to somehow retrieve them. On her travels she comes across a taciturn poacher called Dogman and before long is living in his cowshed. Romance blooms when he finds her injured after being beaten. But with Bean still lost and more tragedies heading her way, there is little chance of rest for Pell who has a harsh lesson to learn; sometimes your decisions can have unforeseen and terrible consequences.
As usual, Meg Rosoff has crafted a beautifully written story. At times it is so realistic you almost feel like you're standing at Pell's shoulder. You can also expect plenty of twists and turns to the plot with a rather mysterious gypsy woman holding the key to the final conclusion. In fact, the plot is so intertwined that most events are sparked by the same few characters who are all frailly linked together.
There is a beautiful and yet serene love story to The Bride's Farewell. If you're expecting passionate embraces and agonised feelings then you will be disappointed as with all the tragedies that occur in her life, Pell takes everything on the chin. Despite the story being very sad in places, it never falls into bleakness and is more often than not a bittersweet experience.
A strong moral aspect of the book highlights the small mindedness of others as many lead bitter enclosed lives, resenting those who have the courage to make something better of themselves.
There is a real gem hidden here which will grow on you in rather a disquieting way. It works on you in the reading, and it could take a few days before you realise just how much you enjoyed it.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I have just finished an amazing book.
It is part fairy tale, part love story. It is a cross between Charles Dickens and Lemony Snicket. It is part Brothers Grimm and part historical melodrama.
In other words, it is unclassifiable.
I am speaking of The Bride's Farewell, the new novel by the New York Bestselling, Carnigie Award Winning author Meg Rosoff. This is her fourth novel for young adults, but even there I would say that genre does not suit her.
Meg's novels are for young adults in that they feature a younger cast of characters. But the themes her books deal with are much more adult; incredibly darker and moodier than most juvenile fiction published today.
Her first novel, How I Live Now, featured a young girl and her cousin that have survived a bombing in a future not unlike ours; and fell in love. Her second novel, Just In Case, concerns a boy who, to escape Fate, reinvents himself; he even imagines an invisible dog for himself that other people can see. Her third novel, What I Was, can be described as a boarding house love story between two boys.
Quite obviously, Meg Rosoff never writes the same book twice.
I was eagerly awaiting to see what Meg Rosoff would give us with The Bride's Farewell. I wondered what the setting would be. In Rosoff's novels, the characters and the place around them play equally important roles.
She is a beautiful storyteller. For me, she seems to have written each of her books carefully, choosing each word so that it feels right. Though her books may be short in length (each of her four novels are around the 200 something page count), the emotion and the power in her novels makes the books feel stronger, somehow; more vibrant.
I'm always a little nervous when I begin a Meg Rosoff novel. Since no two stories are the same, I wonder where she is going to take me; what story she is going to tell. Her novels remind me of the novel in verse books written by Ellen Hopkins. Though Rosoff writes in prose, her books mirror Hopkins' in that they always present us with stories that are engaging, beautifully written and emotionally charged. And each time you open one of their novels you wonder where you are going to end up.
When I read a Meg Rosoff novel, I treat the book as if I am pursuing a gem. So clearly I had high expectations for The Bride's Farewell. Meg Rosoff's new novel has been one of my most anticipated reads of 2009.
I am delighted to say that I was not disappointed in the least.
Quite the contrary, in fact. I think that The Bride's Farewell is Rosoff's best book to date. It concerns sixteen year old Pell Ridley who runs away from her home on her wedding day in the year of eighteen hundred and fifty something.
She leaves home with only her horse Jack and her brother Bean, a boy who does not speak. What she returns with is so much more.
I won't say any more of the plot then that, only to say that you should experience the story as I did. Meg Rosoff writes novels that are not just merely read; they are explored. Each page brings you deeper into the story of Pell and what happens to her that, by the end, you will never want to leave her world.
Ultimately, The Brides Farewell is really about three things: It is about family and courage. And the incredible power of love.
Through stunning words, vivid imagery, Meg Rosoff has given us a delightful historical novel that reminds us of something important.
She reminds us that we cannot get where we are going, if we do not remember where we came from.
Though the book may seem grim at times, The Bride's Farewell is ultimately a joyous novel about the search for who we are and the happiness we find at discovering our place in the world.
It is part fairy tale, part love story. It is a cross between Charles Dickens and Lemony Snicket. It is part Brothers Grimm and part historical melodrama.
In other words, it is unclassifiable.
I am speaking of The Bride's Farewell, the new novel by the New York Bestselling, Carnigie Award Winning author Meg Rosoff. This is her fourth novel for young adults, but even there I would say that genre does not suit her.
Meg's novels are for young adults in that they feature a younger cast of characters. But the themes her books deal with are much more adult; incredibly darker and moodier than most juvenile fiction published today.
Her first novel, How I Live Now, featured a young girl and her cousin that have survived a bombing in a future not unlike ours; and fell in love. Her second novel, Just In Case, concerns a boy who, to escape Fate, reinvents himself; he even imagines an invisible dog for himself that other people can see. Her third novel, What I Was, can be described as a boarding house love story between two boys.
Quite obviously, Meg Rosoff never writes the same book twice.
I was eagerly awaiting to see what Meg Rosoff would give us with The Bride's Farewell. I wondered what the setting would be. In Rosoff's novels, the characters and the place around them play equally important roles.
She is a beautiful storyteller. For me, she seems to have written each of her books carefully, choosing each word so that it feels right. Though her books may be short in length (each of her four novels are around the 200 something page count), the emotion and the power in her novels makes the books feel stronger, somehow; more vibrant.
I'm always a little nervous when I begin a Meg Rosoff novel. Since no two stories are the same, I wonder where she is going to take me; what story she is going to tell. Her novels remind me of the novel in verse books written by Ellen Hopkins. Though Rosoff writes in prose, her books mirror Hopkins' in that they always present us with stories that are engaging, beautifully written and emotionally charged. And each time you open one of their novels you wonder where you are going to end up.
When I read a Meg Rosoff novel, I treat the book as if I am pursuing a gem. So clearly I had high expectations for The Bride's Farewell. Meg Rosoff's new novel has been one of my most anticipated reads of 2009.
I am delighted to say that I was not disappointed in the least.
Quite the contrary, in fact. I think that The Bride's Farewell is Rosoff's best book to date. It concerns sixteen year old Pell Ridley who runs away from her home on her wedding day in the year of eighteen hundred and fifty something.
She leaves home with only her horse Jack and her brother Bean, a boy who does not speak. What she returns with is so much more.
I won't say any more of the plot then that, only to say that you should experience the story as I did. Meg Rosoff writes novels that are not just merely read; they are explored. Each page brings you deeper into the story of Pell and what happens to her that, by the end, you will never want to leave her world.
Ultimately, The Brides Farewell is really about three things: It is about family and courage. And the incredible power of love.
Through stunning words, vivid imagery, Meg Rosoff has given us a delightful historical novel that reminds us of something important.
She reminds us that we cannot get where we are going, if we do not remember where we came from.
Though the book may seem grim at times, The Bride's Farewell is ultimately a joyous novel about the search for who we are and the happiness we find at discovering our place in the world.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Ever since How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff has been a unique voice describing the strength and pain of being young, but every novel is very different. The Bride's Farewell is her fourth, set in the 19th century and told in the third person. Her heroine, Pell, is a preacher's daughter who creeps out of bed on the morning of her wedding day, determined to reject a life of misery as the wife of dull-witted Birdie. Her two-roomed home in Nomansland is full of children and the future offered her by Birdie is easy to reject ("she had only to look at her mother - worn and shapeless with a leaking bladder, great knotted blue veins, and breasts flat as old wineskins") but she is immediately encumbered during her flight by her mute younger brother Bean. Will she abandon him, or become his saviour?
A read as exhilarating as a ride across the moors, Rosoff's novel is rich in the emotional landscape of the untamed female heart. Pell encounters kindness and crooks, gypsies and horse-thieves and a handsome, taciturn hunter called Dogman. A born horse whisperer, she finds she can earn a living of sorts - but then Bean is taken from her, and to save him from certain death in the workhouse and to find her stolen pony, she and her lurcher have to travel many weary miles, discovering certain secrets about her own family's history.
The Bride's Farewell has elements of Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and a good number of Flambard books, yet Rosoff's vivid, pared-down style brings it closer to a kind of Western. Every sentence is crafted and weighted with beauty, whether describing the city of Salisbury ("Beyond the city walls to the north, Pell could see the tip of the lacy cathedral spire rising up towards heaven, while here on earth, stinking sewage collected in ditches beside the road"), hypocrisy or meanness. I'd have liked a little bit more of the romance with Dogman - it's only because another girl tells us so that we realise he's handsome, and he's just a bit too taciturn. But Pell is a terrific heroine, and as she journeys across a landscape that is also that of her passage from girl to woman she becomes something bigger than the heroine of a pony book.
A read as exhilarating as a ride across the moors, Rosoff's novel is rich in the emotional landscape of the untamed female heart. Pell encounters kindness and crooks, gypsies and horse-thieves and a handsome, taciturn hunter called Dogman. A born horse whisperer, she finds she can earn a living of sorts - but then Bean is taken from her, and to save him from certain death in the workhouse and to find her stolen pony, she and her lurcher have to travel many weary miles, discovering certain secrets about her own family's history.
The Bride's Farewell has elements of Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and a good number of Flambard books, yet Rosoff's vivid, pared-down style brings it closer to a kind of Western. Every sentence is crafted and weighted with beauty, whether describing the city of Salisbury ("Beyond the city walls to the north, Pell could see the tip of the lacy cathedral spire rising up towards heaven, while here on earth, stinking sewage collected in ditches beside the road"), hypocrisy or meanness. I'd have liked a little bit more of the romance with Dogman - it's only because another girl tells us so that we realise he's handsome, and he's just a bit too taciturn. But Pell is a terrific heroine, and as she journeys across a landscape that is also that of her passage from girl to woman she becomes something bigger than the heroine of a pony book.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
People, horses and dogs brilliantly portrayed in a great story
I loved this book, and I can't help feeling that some of the people who've given it bad reviews are missing the point. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Victoria Eveleigh
The Bride's Farewell
After discovering the prestigious Carnegie Award, I resolved to read the books nominated and then discuss them with my friends at school. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Mr. S. Merrill
Rosoff on Fine Form
I love Rosoff's writing. This period novel is somewhat of a departure from her previous output, but no worse for that. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Mrs. K. A. Wheatley
a bit boring ...
i read this book because it was on the carnegie shortlist, thought i dont think it deserves this as to start off with i didnt rwally understand this book with all the weird names... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Bookworm101
An excellent tale set in the 1800
Pell leaves home on the morning of her wedding determined not to be trapped in a life of poverty and childbearing like her mother. Read more
Published 15 months ago by lyra
The Bride's Farewell
A gentle foray into life of a country girl in Wiltshire during the 19th Century.
Very easy read.
Simple and inoffensive escapism, suitable for teenage reader.
Very easy read.
Simple and inoffensive escapism, suitable for teenage reader.
Published 22 months ago by Sue21
Utterly amazing
Definitely one of Rosoff's best. I adored How I Live Now, liked Just In Case and was disappointed by What I Was, and so was a little nervous starting this book, having no idea... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Anna
Not a holiday read
This is a pretty good yarn but is marred by the lack of historical context - it takes many chapters to work out whether the setting is 1660 or 1840. Read more
Published on 13 May 2010 by R. Dipple
A bit disappointing
Having read and loved How I Live Now by this author, I was expecting something of the same calibre with The Bride's Farewell. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed. Read more
Published on 19 Jan 2010 by Nicola
Utterly beautiful
Meg Rosoff is a fabulous writer so I knew I was in for a treat when I bought this. Pell is a wonderful character with a great story to tell, but what stood out for me was the way... Read more
Published on 16 Nov 2009 by Book Muncher
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