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Beauty in Thorns

Kate Forsyth

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Aug 04, 2017 Lisa - (Aussie Girl) rated it really liked it

Shelves: nbrc-planes-trains-and-really-big, read-in-2017, historical

Beautifully written and researched imagining of the lives of the passionate and somewhat tragic Pre-Raphaelite artists and the women who inspired them. Poignant, sometimes heart breaking but definitely thought provoking I have never been more thankful to be a woman of the 21st century after reading the aptly titled Beauty in Thorns, where no matter a women's beauty, intelligence or talent she was always at the whim of a man.

4.5 stars ...more

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Jan 23, 2019 Kim rated it really liked it

Shelves: aww2019, act-library, favourites, retellings, 2019-read, owned, signed-copy-in-my-collection

A fabulous immersive story of the women in the preRaphelite Brotherhood. Kate Forsyth knows her subjects well and makes you feel like you're a fly on the wall in their lives. Very hard to know what is the fictional part of their lives and what has been drawn from history, it feels seamless. The women's stories are told in the wonderful setting of Victorian England and all the changes that were taking place at the time but restrained by Victorian Era values. Sleeping Beauty is a theme followed th ...more

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Oct 09, 2017 Tien rated it liked it

Shelves: australian-author, historical-fiction

This must be the lowest ever I've given a Kate Forsyth's book and I still think I'm being very generous with it. Let me start with a disclaimer: usually if there is a the smallest whiff of infidelities (especially in marriage), I'd not even touch the book much less read it (I do believe this to be a childhood trauma that I just have not been able to live down). BUT it's a Kate Forsyth's (one of faves ever) and it's a 'retelling' of Sleeping Beauty so I just had to give it a go.

I note that there ...more

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