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 Sarah McConnell’s husband has been dead for three months, lost in a boating accident. But then she sees him in the grocery store, in her home, at the cabin they once shared. She’s convinced that he’s real, more so when he speaks to her. When she tries to tell the women at her widow’s group, they all smile and reassure her, because they have all seen their husbands at one point or another. Sarah’s grief confuses her so much that she isn’t sure whether her husband is still alive, whether her experiences are real, or whether it’s all just the wishful thinking of a widow who wasn’t sure about anything beforehand either.
This book starts out with the perfect set-up. We instantly know Sarah is a widow and that she’s still seeing her husband as if he were alive. We speedily find out that he’s been lost in a boating accident, and though some of his personal items have been found, his body is still missing. So he might be alive, and missing, or he might truly be dead – it’s a mystery and Sarah is just as confused as the reader is. Throw in a bit of angst left over from their previous marriage and a whole lot of learning to be alone and it’s easy to understand how Sarah can struggle so much while doing her best to appear fairly normal.
Somehow, though, while I liked this book well enough, I never really crossed the line into loving it or feeling like I wanted to pick it up after I’d put it down. I did finish it, but it didn’t stand out in any way, and I felt there was a reason I’d had it for review for a while without considering reading it yet. I think a degree of this is personal; I generally struggle with books like this, which are about women and feelings, mainly I think because I am a woman and have feelings and get enough of that in my own life.
Still, I appreciated the way the book was put together, the slow unveiling of the mystery, confusing at first but with a twist at the end that helps it all make sense and coalesce. It’s a story about coping with grief and making sense of what is left, however possible. Whether David is still alive or not, and we spend most of the novel unsure, Sarah still has to manage her grief because her life will never be the same either way. I can appreciate that The Widow’s Season a very good book and I suspect someone who is the right target audience for this will just love it.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I received this book for free to review.
 We’re already five days into June and somehow I’ve not yet summarised my May reading! As a month overall, May was pretty average. I spent some time planning my trips, playing various video games (Fable III and Assassin’s Creed, for any fellow gamers out there), and discovering Downton Abbey and How I Met Your Mother. I also decided to go on a book buying ban, which has now taken effect.
My reading took a bit of a hit this month thanks to all of the above. I read 13 books, which is probably the least I’ve ever read since I’ve been blogging, and in vivid contrast to April’s 22. Regardless, I’ve already started to make up for the slow month by reading 4 in June so far! Here’s what I read:
Fiction
- Caressed by Ice, Nalini Singh
- Lady of the English, Elizabeth Chadwick
- Silk is for Seduction, Loretta Chase (review to come in late June)
- Amaryllis in Blueberry, Christina Meldrum
- Archangel’s Consort, Nalini Singh
- Madame Tussaud, Michelle Moran
- Anne of the Island, L.M. Montgomery
- The Widow’s Season, Laura Brodie
- The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, Heidi Durrow
- Devil’s Consort, Anne O’Brien
- The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan
I also interviewed Elizabeth Chadwick and participated a bit in Armchair BEA with an intro post and three SEO tips.
Nonfiction
Best of the Month
This month I’d best give my top pick over to Nalini Singh, because this is the month that the Psy-Changeling series hooked me!
I also, however, really loved The Hemingses of Monticello, Madame Tussaud and Lady of the English and would enthusiastically recommend all three.
 Famous for her battle to win the English throne as rightful heir from her cousin Stephen, Matilda ‘the Empress’ is still young when her husband, the Emperor of Germany, passes away, leaving her childless and off to be reunited with her father Henry I. Matilda is Henry’s only living child, which means that she is his heir unless his young wife Adeliza can get pregnant. The two women become fast friends but are separated when Matilda is married once again to Geoffrey of Anjou, a man much younger than her and not at all to her taste. Matilda’s marriage becomes a smaller problem in the wider scheme of English and French politics, however, when her father dies and her cousin Stephen grabs the throne before Matilda can even get to England. Matilda’s fight for the throne for herself and then for her son Henry is juxtaposed with Adeliza’s rediscovery of herself and her possibilities through a second marriage.
Every single time I read a book by Elizabeth Chadwick, I find myself wondering why I haven’t devoured her entire backlist by now (trust me, that day will come). Each book is a treasure to savor and Lady of the English is no exception. Even knowing the history and the outcome of the book, I found myself captivated throughout, spellbound by Chadwick’s well told version of a tale I’ve read before. I loved many, many things about this book, not least its realistic portrayal of historical figures as complex human beings that can’t be summed up in a chronicle.
Matilda, Adeliza, Geoffrey, and Henry all walked and breathed in my mind at least. Matilda in particular stole the show for me. Chadwick’s depiction of her genuine struggle between showing authority as the rightful monarch and being womanly as required was just fabulous and I got a real sense of how frustrating this must have been for her. The very idea of a king was completely at odds with the concept of femininity and Matilda really has nowhere to go.
I also found the friendship between her and Adeliza to be a inspired way to tell this story. Their lives become very different, but they can represent two paths while still remaining connected. Matilda is ambitious and determined to get what is hers by right, turns off her emotions in public as best she can, and is fundamentally a leader, even as she rages against her own powerlessness. Adeliza is more submissive, using more traditional female power tactics to get her way from her husbands, and seems content in the domestic sphere even at the highest levels. The contrast brings more life to the book and I think women who read this book will find a little bit of themselves in both Adeliza and Matilda.
Lady of the English is an excellent read, with a lot in it for both people who like to read historical fiction and those who like to read about relationships. It’s a fascinating story grounded with very real people. Very highly recommended.
For a little more about the book from the author, check out my interview with Elizabeth Chadwick.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review from the publisher.
Today is the release date of Elizabeth Chadwick’s newest, and hugely enjoyable as usual, historical fiction novel, Lady of the English. I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to ask her a few questions in honor of the book’s release!
1. The settings in this novel are so well described. Have you been to many of the locations featured in your books?
Indeed yes. I try to get out and about to locations for every novel. It’s not possible to go everywhere; there wouldn’t be time, but I tryto cover a broad selection. I am familiar with the gem that is Castle Rising which William D’Albini built for his wife, complete with his and hers toilets! I didn’t go to Normandy this time, but I have been there in the past, and also the Loire Valley. London has changed massively, but I have still stood on the same sites even if they look very different now. I didn’t go to Lincoln this time around, but I’ve been on research visits before. For the rest I use guidebooks and online resources – the latter are invaluable providing you are cautious about their content. Obviously imagination and educated guesswork have their place to play as well.
2. Have you ever wanted to write a novel set outside the Middle Ages?
I’ve written contemporary short stories for magazines, but although I can do it, to be honest I don’t get that same buzz. At the start of my career I toyed with the idea of writing Regency, but then fellin love the Middle Ages and that was that. If I did write a Regency now I would have so much research to do to bring myself to a level that would satisfy my integrity. With the Middle Ages I have decades of research under my belt. I have occasionally pondered going to a slightly earlier or slightly later time, where some of my researchwould still be valid, but really the 11th through 13th centuries are my stamping ground
3. I’ve noticed that you are very active on social network sites like Twitter and you run your own blogs – which fans like me love – but how do you manage to find time for writing?
That is indeed a dilemma. Sometimes it gets very hectic I admit, most of the time it’s a case of having the ability to multi-task quickly combined with being able to dip in and out of the writing at will. So I’ll write a couple of paragraphs, check twitter and e-mail andFacebook, dash something off, and then go back to novel for another couple of paragraphs. I really do enjoy interacting with people and listening to their stories. I’m not one of those authors who is forced into social networking with a cattle prod by their publishers,but there is still only so much time in a day, and it is a balancing act to keep everything in motion.
4. What made you choose to juxtapose Adeliza’s story with the more famous Matilda’s?
Empress Matilda is well known in history and whenever a story is told about her by writers, King Stephen and his wife also called Matilda are generally the other big players – for obvious reasons. However no author has ever explored the dynamic between Matilda and Adeliza. No one has told Adeliza’s story which is a fascinating one. She has been pretty much forgotten or at best marginalised. But the relationship between her and the Empress Matilda was probably the most important woman to woman one of Matilda’s adult life. When Matilda returned to her father’s court following the death of her first husband, shewould have spent several years in Adeliza’s company. When Matilda and her second husband Geoffrey Anjou split up for 18 months, she and Adeliza again spent time together, and it was Adeliza who allowed Matilda into England to begin her campaign for the English Crown.
That must have taken a lot of guts on Adeliza’s behalf, and must also have indicated how strong the relationship was between the women. Somehow Adeliza persuaded her husband, who was on Stephen’s side, to allow the Empress to land at Arundel. Adeliza’s contribution to the future reign of Henry II should not be overlooked. If you’ll pardon the pun she was a kingpin. Both women left England never to retur naround the same time – 1148, and so it gave me a good cut-off point and helped me to structure the novel.
5. Moving into theoretical territory here, do you think there was anything Matilda could have done to get and keep her throne?
This is a difficult one. Matilda would always have had a hard row to hoe as a woman in a man’s world. If one searches around one can find examples of women who ruled in their own right, but they were the exception and in the 12th century the rules were becoming more rigid and women were becoming increasingly pinned down. If Matilda had been more conciliatory at crucial times in her bid for the Crown – such as in London where she blew it by being haughty towards the citizens who were natural supporters of Stephen, or if she had handled Stephen’s brother Henry of Winchester with kid gloves, she might indeed havecarried the day. But even if she had been crowned, I wonder if she would have kept the throne. I don’t think for one minute it would have been the end of matters. Whether she was a Queen or not, the fighting would have continued. Having looked at Matilda’s life, I think she wasn’t an easy person to get on with. She could be haughty and proud and cold; but she was honest and direct and expected others to be the same. And she had a warm and generous side that can still be traced via some of the Chronicles outside the scope of the war in England. I also think -and this is the theory not something I can prove, that she was a martyr to premenstrual tension. It’s something that is never factored into the historical record, but it must have played its part among all women known to history. Add the wrong time of the month into a difficult situation that calls for patience and diplomacy, and I can see how things might have gone pear shaped very fast. I think also that Matilda was filled with a vast amount of hurt and anger that people had rejected her, that they had gone back on their word, and I do not believe she forgave easily. When the time came that she was in command, she let herself be ruled by some of that hurt and anger, and it was part of her downfall.
Many thanks to Elizabeth Chadwick for answering all of my questions! Please come back tomorrow for my review of Lady of the English!
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review.
 In Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer digs deep into the concept of memorisation and how our lack of it as a society has affected us. He goes so far as to compete in a memory championships, sharing his tips along the way, as we learn just what it takes to be a memory professional. He doesn’t memorise just the shopping list or the US Presidents; he memorises poems, playing cards, and people, with easy tips for us to learn how to memorise as well.
I have a memory that is simultaneously atrocious and very efficient, so I was incredibly curious about recognised memory techniques. Foer mainly describes the memory palace idea that I’d seen used previously, although I can’t remember where. It’s surprisingly effective; I managed to do his little exercise and actually found it very successful, to the point where I can still remember it a few weeks later. There are a couple of other hints and tricks throughout as he goes through the process of learning to be a memory champion.
That wasn’t the most interesting part for me, though, as I was much more interested in the history of memory and his investigation into the top minds in the world, including those with mental illnesses whose memories are somehow naturally more effective than the rest of us. He goes in two directions with the latter, interviewing a man who has no memory and a man who has unnatural memory abilities. It’s absolutely fascinating to see how the mind is affected at different stages of memory recall. Foer also talks to memory professionals – people who help you remember – and gets a wide range of perspectives on the subject. All of it was quite interesting.
I’m sure it helped that I am firmly in Foer’s camp in that I believe memory is very important. I am partially blessed with a good memory; I can stick things in my memory with relative ease when I try, and sometimes I find random dates and facts stuck in my head without real effort (my new mobile number popped into my head one day and hasn’t left yet!). But if I’m not paying attention, I forget very easily, and I’ve never been good at using memory devices to remember things like the planets. I usually just remember the sentence and forget which planet is which word!
But I do believe memory is important, largely for the reasons Foer mentions; we need to have a lodestone to attach future knowledge on. As a practical example, I know a lot more history than the average person who has never really cared for it, like my husband. When we go to a museum, I love it partly because I can usually relate what I’m seeing to the store of memory in my head (partly because I love history). He loses interest pretty quickly and forgets what he’s seen because nothing has meaning to him, but when he sees something he can relate to, he’s much more interested. We need to have some firm grounding of facts in our heads to relate to the world around us – this is why a lot of older literature is harder to read, because we’ve lost the intimate knowledge of things like classical literature and the Bible to attach allusions to.
Although I enjoyed parts of this book more than others, I would still highly recommend it to anyone who is at all interested in memory, whether you’d like to remember better or are simply curious about the history of memorisation.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I received this book for free from Amazon Vine.
 On the eve of the French Revolution in Paris, Marie Grosholtz runs the Salon de Cire with her uncle Curtius, sculpting wax figures of prominent public figures and placing them in realistic settings for public viewings. Their wax figures are so famous that even the royal family come to pay a visit and many nobles request sculptures of themselves. But revolutionary talk is set to change everything and Marie, as new tutor to the king’s sister at Versailles, is in a position to hear everything and witness the fall of the monarchy from the inside. When the revolution begins to threaten her life, Marie must decide between staying in Paris with her family or fleeing to England with her lover, Henri.
I have been really looking forward to this book for months. I’ve loved all of Michelle Moran’s books set in Egypt and Rome and was thrilled that she’d chosen a time period more to my overall tastes this time. I’ve always been curious about Madame Tussaud and this just seemed like the perfect way to learn a little bit more about her. It would have been easy to be disappointed given the high level of my expectations, but I loved this book just as much as Moran’s previous books. It was immensely satisfying in every way. In fact, the only thing I didn’t like was the cover quote, ‘Can Love Survive the Revolution?’, which just didn’t convey what the book was about at all to me.
I loved the atmosphere in this book in particular. There is a constant sense of danger and suspense around Marie, even at the beginning, particularly due to the talk that occurs in her family’s salon. She can feel what’s going to happen, and as a reader, I know enough of the history of the French Revolution to sense that things aren’t going to go well. As she gets close to members of the royal family, Marie’s outlook on events starts to shift, and she starts to understand the depth of difference between the actual lives of royalty and the people’s perception of them. I particularly enjoyed the scenes set in Versailles – both because I’ve been there and because I recently learned how disgusting the palace used to be from watching a recent TV show, Filthy Cities on the BBC. These added a very welcome extra dimension to my reading and Marie’s Paris.
I also, predictably, loved Marie’s character. As you’ll undoubtedly have noticed, I am a very character-driven reader, and I was thrilled to have one I could really appreciate in Marie. She’s practical, with a keen eye for money and a determination to do her best, but she also has a romantic, sympathetic heart that does emerge on occasion. Her mission in life isn’t to get married and have babies, although she wouldn’t mind doing that as well as her job; she’s about as career oriented as an eighteenth century woman could get. And, we know from the beginning, she succeeded hugely and her name now graces wax museums the world over. I think she would have been pleased.
If you’re a historical fiction fan, I think you’ll love Madame Tussaud. It has the perfect mix of historical detail, atmosphere, story, and great characters. Highly recommended.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I purchased this book.
Good afternoon Saloners! Today finds me thinking about my two trips into Europe later this year. I’m going to Amsterdam and Bruges with my friend at the end of August and then (hopefully) Rome with my husband in October. As these are creeping up on me, I’m already thinking about the books I want to read before I go there. I haven’t made up lists yet, but I already have two I know I want to read – Amsterdam: The Brief Life of a City by Geert Mak and I, Claudius by Robert Graves. I have the second one out from the library and I’m waiting for the first. Do you have any suggestions for great books set in Amsterdam, Bruges, or Rome? History or fiction?
Which brings me to my second decision of this weekend – I am not going to buy any books until after my travels for the year are over. That would be towards the end of October. I need that money more for experiences, and with 450+ books sitting around waiting for me to read them, it’s not like I’m going to suffer from having nothing to read. (Even if I did, I have enough books that I plan to reread to keep me going for years). As ever, though, I have some exceptions, so I don’t chafe too much about this new rule.
- I’m still allowed to buy anything I’ve already preordered, though these run out in July.
- I’m also still allowed to buy the next Wheel of Time books should I get that far in the series reread before the end of October, A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin, and The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss when I reread the first in that series.
- I’m allowed to buy books on my travels as souvenirs.
- I can still take in any book that’s free, either from the library, review copies, or programs like Amazon Vine.
What I’d really like to do is get my TBR pile below 400 this year, but I don’t really think my resistance is going to last that long. I’d rather just think about saving money towards my trips!
As a bit of a recap for those who weren’t around this week, I reflected on my reread of Anne of the Island, reviewed Chasing Aphrodite and a number of great romance novels, and wrapped it up with a few tips about SEO for book bloggers. This week I’ll be hosting an interview with Elizabeth Chadwick for the release of her newest book, Lady of the English, and reviewing hopefully quite a few books to catch up on my backlog. I have tomorrow off, so plenty of time to actually do so.
Wishing all of you a fantastic week!
 As a few of you may know, I do SEO in my day job and have had a bit of fun toying around with my own blog. For today’s post in Armchair BEA, I thought I’d share a few pro SEO tips to help you rank better, should you be interested in doing so! For those who aren’t aware, SEO is short for search engine optimisation and is the process of improving your site’s quality and authority to rank better in search engines. There are people who go about this very badly, called black hat SEOs (the spammers of the internet who leave annoying comments on your blogs with names like ‘play poker online’), but if your reviews and posts are genuinely good and will help others to decide what to read, there’s no reason you can’t use a few tweaks to take advantage of the stuff you’re already writing.
1. Keywords
Before you worry about your search engine rankings, you should put some thought into what exactly you want to rank for. What do you think others will be happy to find if they land on your blog from a search engine? A particular book review? A book review blog? A historical fiction blog? Choose a few terms that you think you’d like to rank higher for and make sure you actually use them somewhere in your blog’s copy. Perhaps an intro sidebar or on your ‘about me’ page.
It’s easiest to rank for what you already do on your blog. For example, I put ‘review’ in the title of all of my book review posts because it gives potential people clicking through a better idea of what they’ll get when they land here. Plus it’s easier to rank for something like ‘The White Queen review’ than it is for just ‘The White Queen’.
2. Title Tags
A title tag is the text that shows up in the tab on your browser. This post’s reads ‘Blogging about Blogging: SEO | Medieval Bookworm’. If I were serious about ranking for, say, ‘Historical Fiction Blog’, I’d stick that in there on the home page, so it would say ‘Historical Fiction Blog | Medieval Bookworm’. This is one of the more important aspects of on-site SEO, surprisingly enough, and can really make a big difference with a simple change. I am actually on the first page for ‘Historical Fiction Blog’, so I haven’t invested much in this personally, however if you all take my advice I may start. 
Title tags are easily modified through a variety of SEO plug-ins. All in One SEO Pack is a good one.
3. Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is when you can find the same page on two different URLs. So when someone scrapes your site, they’ve made duplicate content out there; it’s not only theft it’s also hurting your site’s rankings. If your site is pulled using the RSS feed and published online, you’re also creating duplicate content, a real problem for those of us who have full RSS feeds.
You can also get duplicate content on your own site. If you can access the same post with two different URLs, then you have a problem. WordPress can do this if you put a post in two different categories (I actually have one here: http://medievalbookworm.com/guest-blog/guest-review-the-trinity-six-charles-cumming/ is also http://medievalbookworm.com/reviews/guest-review-the-trinity-six-charles-cumming/).
To solve this problem, keep your posts to one category wherever possible and use tags more extensively. Alternatively you can change your URL structure to remove any category parameters, but changing the URL structure on an already established blog can be difficult since you’ll have to redirect all of your own links. It’s easiest just to stick with a single category for WordPress blog if you do have it in your URL.
Please let me know if these tips were at all helpful for you and whether you’re interested in hearing more!
 Love in the Afternoon, Lisa Kleypas
Beatrix Hathaway has always been the oddest member of her family. More at home with the animals in the stable than with other people, she’s content to be out of society and has always assumed that she’ll remain unmarried forever. All that changes, however, when she discovers that her friend Prudence has been completely neglecting one of her beaus, Christopher Phelan, even though he’s at war. Beatrix takes it upon herself to write letters in Pru’s name, with her permission, because she knows a soldier needs that kind of comfort. But what she doesn’t expect is to fall in love with her correspondent, who has never liked her, or for her reaction to his return to England.
This book won me over from the first few pages. I can’t resist a love letter and the first pages of this book are precisely that, Christopher and Beatrix’s exchange. I could genuinely feel the love between them and I was immediately won over, somehow – it was a perfect pairing from that moment on.
While the rest of the book didn’t quite match those letters, they still set up this love story very well. A few of the pieces didn’t fit – it’s impossible to believe Beatrix and Prudence actually ever made friends – but the strength of the main couple carried the book through very well.
This was a lovely ending to the Hathaway series and I’m sorry to see them go!
 When Beauty Tamed the Beast, Eloisa James
Piers Yelverton, the Earl of Marchant, is a doctor in Wales. Despite having a temper, hating his father, and a leg wound that has never healed, Piers is a brilliant doctor; that won’t get him married, like his father wants. Linnet, meanwhile, has been ruined completely by accident, but lucky for her she can charm a rock, and is thus sent to become Piers’s bride. Despite the fact that he’ll have nothing to do with her, she’s determined to become his wife and persuade him to love her – but when she falls in love with him, she has to face the fact that he may never feel the same.
Eloisa James is one of my auto-buy romance authors. If a new book with her name on it is coming out, you can guarantee I will have preordered it somewhere (in the case, the handy Book Depository). I’m loving her latest romances based on fairy tales – this is the second one and doesn’t disappoint in the slightest. Beauty, naturally, is Linnet, who is not only gorgeous but charming and perfect in every way. Beast is Yelverton, who is not unattractive physically but has a bad leg and a temper to match. The author freely admits that she was inspired for his character by the TV doctor House which in my eyes (and I imagine in many others’) only made him a more appealing character.
What I loved about this book is the way that the author turned around the stereotypes by forcing Beauty to deal with unattractiveness and by showing Beast that he really isn’t horrible after all. It was very clever and well done – I am already looking forward to the next book by Eloisa James.
 Archangel’s Consort, Nalini Singh
The third book in the ongoing paranormal romance / urban fantasy series about archangel Raphael and his consort Elena, this novel focuses on the growing threat to angelkind from the awakening of an older, mentally unstable archangel – Raphael’s mother, Caliane.
This novel is very much a continuation of previous novels in the series – I wouldn’t dream of reading it on its own. Relationships continue to develop and the backstory of both characters is fleshed out more. I have to admit that so far, I am preferring Singh’s Psy-Changeling series, simply because I prefer getting to know two different characters. I like these two, but they’re already in love – they’ve lost a bit of that glow for me. Regardless, I enjoyed reading this one, and fully intend to pick up the next in the series, which in any case will be focusing on another character.
All external links are affiliate links. I purchased these books.
 Museums that focus on the antiquities have to get art from somewhere, and for much of history, it’s been done through regrettable looting. Starting with imperialism and carrying right on down to the present day, many astonishingly renowned museums have continued to populate their collections with looted art, stolen in particular from Italy and Greece. This hasn’t stopped despite a number of laws and international sanctions passed against the destruction of archaeological sites and the theft of priceless art. The Getty Museum is one such offender; a museum that sped to fame largely on the basis of looted art, but which then positioned itself against the practice, led by curator Marion True. When the scandal was exposed, the Getty’s reputation fell with it. This is the expose of the museum, the result of years of investigative reporting, and a true insight into the practice of purchasing looted art in the United States.
I love museums and history, but I thought that looting was a practice that had ceased long ago. About the only thing I’d heard about recently was Greece’s requests for the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum, and even that doesn’t seem to be an urgent matter. I have been appalled at the carelessness with which archaeological artifacts were treated, but largely in the context of the past – mainly the Victorians destroying archaeology in search of the good stuff, most of which I’ve probably seen in the British Museum. I had no idea that this still happened, and worse that it was happening in Italy and Greece, probably the most archaeologically rich countries in Europe. This book really laid that all out for me, not only what damage the looters were doing with descriptions of art dirty, in pieces, and broken, but also how much history is lost. We have no idea why so many statues existed simply because they were wrenched from their context with no way of returning them.
The trade in stolen art had significant consequences for the Getty, which appears to have considered itself free of any laws virtually from its founding. The original curator regularly helped “donors” cheat on their tax returns, getting back millions for art that was often worth just a few thousands. He, of course, willingly acquired stolen objects. Through the ensuing years we can see pretty clearly the difficulties that museums were in. If they weren’t acquiring new and exciting antiquities, they fell from the limelight – but all the new and exciting antiquities were obviously stolen. Curators regularly had to choose between their morals and their career, if they even considered their morals at all. The curator who finally did, Marion True, still couldn’t resist purchasing looted art when it called to her, which ultimately led to the destruction of her career and positioned the Getty as a hypocritical institution.
What I liked was that even though the Getty is at the center of the book, the conclusions drawn clearly apply to other museums as well. This book deals solely with American museums, so it depicts which other museums caused scandals in their time and which ones ended up returning stolen items just like the Getty. It was a widespread crime, and we can imagine similar discussions happening in other institutions as happened in the Getty. The book also shows how attitudes in America changed; the top museums do now have policies against looted art and have begun returning stolen artifacts to Italy and Greece, starting off partnerships that will enrich museums across all the countries. The Getty is the focus, with documented conversations and interviews, but its fate was pivotal in the role of all such institutions in the country.
If you’re at all interested in museums and their history in the US, Chasing Aphrodite is definitely a book for you. I found it utterly fascinating; I thought about it while I wasn’t reading about it and even went so far as to tell others about it (even though they were clearly uninterested). I was appalled by what happened, but I feel I now have a better idea about the workings of museums and I’m much more confident that they’re moving in the right direction. We’ll never know quite how much knowledge is lost, but we can hope that more is left to discover in the future.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from Netgalley for review.
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