The Fly on the wheel de Katherine Cecil Thurston

Katherine Cecil Thurston (1874-1911) était une romancière et journaliste irlandaise. Ses thrillers politiques (et oui, vous avez bien lu) ont rencontré un certain succès. Certains ont même été adaptés au théâtre.
Son divorce avec l'écrivain Ernest Temple Thurston avait fait du bruit à l'époque, celui-ci s'étant plaint de la personnalité "dominatrice" de son épouse et du fait qu'elle gagnait beaucoup plus d'argent que lui ...
Plus d'infos sur sa vie quelque peu étonnante ici : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Cecil_Thurston



Katherine Cecil Thurston est aussi l'auteur d'un roman profondément irlandais et à la tonalité féministe, The Fly on the wheel, sorti en 1908.

La petite maison d'édition anglaise Manderley Press (qui a pour particularité de se concentrer sur les lieux et décors de ses romans - d'où son nom) vient de le rééditer:

Citation :

Isabel Costello - the headstrong and passionate heroine of this novel - waltzes into the small Irish town of Waterford, and is immediately thrust into a world of gossip, duty and obligation. As she tests the boundaries of social convention, the narrowness of women’s lives in middle-class society is shockingly exposed.

With a nod to the works of Tolstoy and the Brontës, The Fly on the Wheel is a poignant portrait of the moral and psychological restrictions imposed on young women at the turn of the twentieth century. Illicit love, toxic relationships and feminist desires determine the course of Isabel’s introduction to Waterford society, with dramatic and tragic consequences.

The book is a thrilling, dramatic and sensationalist page-turner, which became an instant bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic when it was originally published in 1908. It became one of Katherine Cecil Thurston’s best-known works – perhaps because of the uncanny similarities between Isabel’s demise and the author’s own untimely death just a few years later.

It was written in the author’s country cottage – Maycroft – in Ardmore near Waterford in Ireland, where Megan and the book’s illustrator Fatti Burke, were also both born and grew up. Ardmore has been home to many writers, including Molly Keane, Nora Roberts and Fergal Keane – who once described it as “heaven on earth”.

Citation :

Katherine Cecil Thurston was a highly popular and successful writer of short stories, political thrillers and novels at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1904, she was propelled to literary fame and fortune with her wildly successful book John Chilcote, MP.  This earned her an avid following and allowed her to experiment with more radical subject matters and characters in subsequent books, including gambling, suicide, adultery and a cross-dressing female heroine. Her characteristic tone is compelling, passionate and eloquent.

Oh la la quelle tentation !

Je me demande si c'était une si bonne idée ce challenge

Je l'ai commandé 

Hâte d'avoir ton avis !

Je l'ai acheté d'occasion, je croise les doigts pour ne pas avoir de mauvaise surprise. J'ai vérifié, ce n'est pas une vieille édition Virago 

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