Saturday, September 08, 2012

The Yellow House by Patricia Falvey

I decided to read this book after reading reviews of it on the War Through The Generations blog.  In order to count towards the reading challenge, WWI should be a primary or secondary theme.  While parts of the book occurred during WWI, it really didn't seem like either a primary or a secondary theme to me.  But since both hostesses of the challenge (Anna Horner and Serena Agusto-Cox) counted it, I guess I can count it too.

The book is a historical novel set in early 20th century Northern Ireland.  I didn't know much (or any) Irish history, so I learned a lot about Ireland's struggle for independence from Great Britain, the formation of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and the partitioning of Ireland into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.  The main character, Eileen O'Neill, was a very strong, opinionated, and defiant young woman.  I sometimes got tired of how angry she was much of the time, although much of her anger was justified.  The love story portion was a bit too predictable for me, but otherwise I enjoyed the book.  I rate it 3 out of 5. 

1 comment:

Anna and Serena said...

Thanks so much for reviewing this and participating in the challenge...We've linked to this on the reviews page and a snippet will appear on Sept. 18.