![]() (This is drawn from real events, and also inspired the Book An American Tragedy and the film A Place in the Sun.) A number of things distinguished A Northern Light for me, but the aspect that stands out the most is the approach to placing the novel in its historical context.ĭonnelly's approach to the turn-of-the century setting is akin to the world-building approach seen in excellent urban fantasy-type fiction. The second story is a mystery around the death of young woman staying at the hotel where Mattie works who's body is found in the lake. The first is 16-year old Mattie's life on a farm, where her aspirations of a bookish life and college in New York City collide with the economic realities of caring for her sisters and helping her father on the farm, as well as the expectations for a girl her age to marry and establish a household. The crux of the story set in 1906 upstate New York (around Utica and Cortland, in the Adirondacks) and centers around two converging stories. Instead, it's more a few impressions of why this historical novel worked for me when so many others have not. ![]() ![]() That's the long way of my saying that this isn't a "review" of Jennifer Donnelly's A Northern Light. ![]()
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