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A Great and Terrible Beauty
 
 
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A Great and Terrible Beauty (Hardcover)

de Libba Bray (Author) "PLEASE TELL ME THAT'S NOT GOING TO BE PART OF MY birthday dinner this evening ..." En savoir plus
4.3étoiles sur 5  Voir tous les commentaires (74 évaluations de client)
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Descriptions du produit

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up An interesting combination of fantasy, light horror, and historical fiction, with a dash of romance thrown in for good measure. On her 16th birthday, Gemma Doyle fights with her mother. She wants to leave India where her family is living, runs off when her mother refuses to send her to London to school, has a dreadful vision and witnesses her mother's death. Two months later, Gemma is enrolled in London's Spence School, still troubled by visions, and unable to share her grief and guilt over her loss. She gradually learns to control her vision and enter the "realms" where magical powers can make anything happen and where her mother waits to instruct her. Gradually she and her new friends learn about the Order, an ancient group of women who maintained the realms and regulated their power, and how two students unleashed an evil creature from the realms by killing a Gypsy girl. Gemma uncovers her mother's connection to those events and learns what she now must do. The fantasy element is obvious, and the boarding-school setting gives a glimpse into a time when girls were taught gentility and the importance of appearances. The author also makes a point about the position of women in Victorian society. Bray's characters are types--Felicity, clever and powerful; Ann, plain and timid; Pippa, beautiful and occasionally thoughtless; Gemma, spirited and chafing under society's rules--but not offensively so, and they do change as the story progresses. The ending leaves open the likelihood of a sequel. Recommend this to fantasy fans who also like Sherlock Holmes or Mary Russell.--Lisa Prolman, Greenfield Public Library, MA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From AudioFile

On her sixteenth birthday, Gemma Doyle's mother dies violently. Her father retreats into an opium haze, and she is whisked from her home in India to England. At Spence Academy, where, twenty years earlier, a tragic fire claimed three lives, Gemma discovers a diary recounting the events leading to the tragedy. Thus begins a forbidden and dangerous journey for Gemma and her friendly enemies, Felicity, Pippa, and Ann. Josephine Bailey's performance is especially poignant as Gemma struggles with her awakening sensuality and with a growing awareness of her magical powers. Bailey transforms Libba Bray's arcane facts about girls' schools, the role relegated to women, hypocrisy, and expectations in Victorian England into a plausible excursion into supernatural realms. This coming-of-age story will captivate both older teens and adults. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --Ce texte provient d'une édition qui n'est plus publiée ou qui est non diponible.
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4.3étoiles sur 5 (74 évaluations de client)
 
 
 
 
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Commentaires client les plus utiles

 
12 internautes sur 12 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
3.0étoiles sur 5 60% great, 20% terrible, 20% beautiful, Mai 20 2004
Par E. R. Bird "Ramseelbird" (Manhattan, NY) - Voir tous mes commentaires
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
What, in your opinion, is more important: What an author has to say or how an author chooses to say it? Take, for example, Libby Bray's, "A Great and Terrible Beauty". Set in a Victorian era girl's boarding school, the book has the uneasy task of having a great voice and yet not much in the way of a plot. Bray struggles to weave together the different components that made up (wealthy) women's lives in 19th century Britain. At times she is exceedingly gifted. At others, she falls short of the mark.

Gemma Doyle was born and raised in India with her mother, father, and brother. Having just turned sixteen she is like any other adolescent girl, getting into squabbles with her mom and pouting that she cannot go to live in England. Deliverance for Gemma comes as a very mixed blessing when she witnesses her mother's suicide (in a vision, no less) and is sent to an all-girl's finishing school outside of London. Falling into the usual petty squabbles of popularity and independence, Gemma eventually comes to realize that there is more to the Spence Academy, and herself, than she could ever have known. In a madcap tale of gypsies, magical powers, and deep dark soul-sucking evil Gemma has to face up to her own personal demons as well as the very real spirits that wish her, and her friends, harm.

One one level, this is just your typical romantic bodice-ripper complete with virile dangerous young men and the comedy of manners that set the standards so long ago. Reading this book really seemed to me to be a kind of "The Craft" meets "The Little Princess". Gemma befriends both popular and unpopular alike and much of the book dwells on the problems haunting each of her friends. While Bray has an excellent voice for dialogue and situational comedy, I couldn't quite figure out what she was trying to say with her characters. One minute the two popular girls, Pippa and Felicity, would be playing incredibly cruel tricks on their classmates. Next, Gemma is their best friend and they all bare their souls over cups of whiskey. While the story really does make you feel as if these girls are getting closer, I found it very weird that when some of the girls go over the edge and deal in dark magics and (in a sense) murder, Gemma is perfectly willing to forgive them three pages later and never mention it again. There is no blame in this novel, a thing I found peculiar (especially when you're dealing with sixteen year-olds). When Gemma's friends get an innocent teacher fired, Gemma minds for maybe two hours and then, once more, forgets.

Then there's the fact that we never meet the villain. This book might have just as well plastered the words, "SEQUEL COMING SOON" on its cover for all that it alludes to future books. It is very rare to read an entire book about a villain whose name appears from page seven onwards, and yet we never meet them even once. The resolutions in this book are shaky at best and though the bookflap for "A Great and Terrible Beauty" states this this is "the story of a girl who saw another way" out of the standard roles written for women, by the end Gemma really hasn't changed anything in the least.

And finally there are the gypsies. Why is it that gypsies are always the standard ethnic group for magical doings? There are actual gypsies in the world, you know. This book, however, prefers the romantic version, choosing to forget that they are an actual culture with actual dealings in the world. Turning gypsies into the mythical magical people that exist only in the minds of over-romanticizing white people not only does real gypsies a disservice but it makes books like this one offensive. I won't even dwell on how Bray chose to display natives of India as well. Let's just say this book reads best if you like rooting for Anglo-Saxons.

I'm being harsh on this book, and for good reason. Bray is capable of wonderful writing. The slow building threat of Gemma's situation,and the fact that she is repeatedly told to cease and desist all magic or pay the consequences, all this is very good and dark. Unfortunately, there's never a payoff at the end. The gypsy Kartik tells Gemma to stop or else, but he never makes good on his threat. Gemma never really pays for anything she's done either. I was so confused by what was good and bad in this story that I spent three quarters of the book believing that Gemma's mother, for all intents and purposes, was an illusion or an evil creature in disguise. That's just me, but in all other ways the book is very bad at rewarding the reader for slogging through the foreshadowing. And boy oh boy is there a LOT of foreshadowing. In any case, I think with a little rewriting this could have been an excellent novel. Unfortunately, we'll never know now.

None of this is to say that "A Great and Terrible Beauty" isn't a great read. It really is exciting and interesting. I'm simply warning you that it is possible that you might feel a little let down or cheated at the end. The climaxes never climax as much as they could. The fearful moments are never quite fearful enough. It's a book of halfs, never a whole. But for any reader who wants to dwell in the darkness a little and read a tale about a girl who has the capability of giving herself a great deal of power, go to it. It is, above all things, rather fun.
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8 internautes sur 8 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
3.0étoiles sur 5 Just couldn't believe it, Avril 7 2004
Par B. McEwan "yellokat" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - Voir tous mes commentaires
(REAL NAME)   
I wanted to love this novel, I truly did. After all, it's written by a fellow Brooklynite and it's about topics I enjoy: psychic powers and female bonding. But, ultimately, I found this book only mildly satisfying, mostly because the action just isn't believeable, even for a story about the supernatural. The novel has some good points, which is why I give it three stars, but it certainly promises far more than it delivers. If you are interested in the interpersonal dynamics among young people, and also enjoy an element of mystery in your novels, try instead The Secret History by Donna Tart, which is a truly first-rate novel and far surpasses this pedestrian effort from Libba Bray.
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2 internautes sur 2 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
3.0étoiles sur 5 still not exactly sure how I feel about it...., Juil 3 2004
Par M. Cookson (Colorado Springs) - Voir tous mes commentaires
(REAL NAME)   
This book is about Gemma, a sixteen-year-old girl who lives in India with her mother and father. After her mother is murdered (something that Gemma witnesses in a strange and frightening vision), Gemma is sent to a finishing school in London. The story takes place in 1895. Gemma gradually gets to know the other girls at the school. Most of them are in some way emotionally damaged, and they deal with the hopelessness of their situations by taking everything out on those who happen to be weaker than themselves. What ends up tying Gemma to several of the girls is a diary she discovers, the diary of two girls who attended the school years ago and practiced magic. In a way, this book has the elements of a mystery, as Gemma discovers the link between her mother's murder, the two girls, and her own visions.

I'm still not sure if I like this book. For a great deal of the book, I had the feeling that I didn't really know any of the characters, not even Gemma, even though the book was from her point of view. Maybe this was intentional, but it was disconcerting. If you're looking for a book with nice, pleasant characters, you should look elsewhere, because there aren't really any here. They all do mean things, even Gemma, and the reasons they have for doing these things doesn't seem to detract much from the fact that they did them. Really, though, you'd think that, after reading all 403 pages of this book, that I'd feel like I knew more about the characters and events, but this book feels like it leaves more questions behind than it answers. I've heard that there will be more books about Gemma, which is good, since there needs to be more if the story is to be understood. The book leaves Gemma's powers, and her relationships with the people she calls her friends, in limbo.

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 		 Commentaires client les plus récents

3.0étoiles sur 5 Wouldn't draw me in to Book II.
After witnessing (through second sight) the death of her Mother, and a mysterious stranger she met moments before, Gemma finds herself uprooted from everything she knows from her... Read more
Publié il y a 14 jours par Darder

3.0étoiles sur 5 A Great and Terrible Beauty
If you enjoy a Victorian Era novel, this is a good one to choose. It begins in India in the days of the Raj and continues on to England where the young heroine is sent to a... Read more
Publié il y a 3 mois par Susan Ricketts

2.0étoiles sur 5 Baffled by it's success
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Publié il y a 4 mois par T. Kharitonova

3.0étoiles sur 5 Enjoyable but predictable
This was a very light read for me, and found the story quite predictable. Non the less, I enjoyed it greatly and anticipate reading the sequels.
Publié il y a 5 mois par Annie

2.0étoiles sur 5 Not a solid story...
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Publié il y a 7 mois par Why Not

5.0étoiles sur 5 Compelling and Unique
Highly recommened!! I could not put this book down. It is a historical fantasy set in a Victorian girl's boarding school. The fantasy world is compelling and unique. Read more
Publié le Oct. 17 2007 par N. Manning

5.0étoiles sur 5 Very good and I have other good books to share IF you liked this book or decoding books
I have 3 favorite books (soon to be four). They are A great and terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and the Riddles of Epsilon (soon to be sweet far thing) A great and terrble beauty... Read more
Publié le Mai 24 2007 par Grace

5.0étoiles sur 5 loved it
I've read this book so many times because i love it. The characters seem real and relatable. I can understand Felicity's power crazed ways...and Gemma's sardonic attitude. Read more
Publié le Fév 2 2007 par Kara

5.0étoiles sur 5 A Great Read
I loved this book and I couldn't put it down (I read it in a day...literally could not put it down)! Read more
Publié le Sep 18 2006 par GeekSquadofOne

3.0étoiles sur 5 Good, but kind of iffy about the realms
I came across this book quite accidently when I was standing in line to purchase another book. Price wasn't bad, and the fact that it's kinda gothic and set in Victorian era got... Read more
Publié le Fév 5 2006 par mouse__07

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