Rascals and confusion, Trollope wrote with all the elements that excited that of readers from the Victorian Era, and that can also excite ones from our age.

One of the brightest lights of the Palliser novels is extinguished in the first chapter with the death of the Duchess Glencora. Bereft of her vivacious influence the grieving Duke, already reserved and traditional, sinks into stodginess. Far worse than this, he is left with three young adult children whom he fails completely to understand. To say that they cause him many heartaches is to greatly understate the situation.

The eldest, heir to the title, Lord Silverbridge has already been booted out of Oxford for a silly prank. Now he goes into horse racing with questionable companions and winds up as the victim of a major scandal, which costs his father a huge sum. Next he deserts his father's choice for his bride to woo an American girl whose grandfather was a laborer.

The Duke's daughter, Mary, wants to marry a commoner, son of a country squire, a good man, but with no title and little money. The outraged Duke is adamantly opposed to such a match, but Mary vows to marry no other and is constantly miserable.

The youngest son, Gerald, who plays a relatively minor role in the novel, is forced to leave Cambridge because he was away without permission attending a race in which his brother's horse was running. Later he loses several thousand pounds in a card game.

The Duke bemoans his children's foolishness and their lack of respect for the traditions of their fathers. He pays for their mistakes, but vigorously opposes the two unwise marriages. But although he is a strict, authoritarian man, he is also a compassionate and loving father. Will he yield to the fervent desires of his rebellious offspring? The resolution of this clash of generations brings the Palliser novels to a satisfying conclusion.

As always, it is Trollope's great gift of characterization which makes THE DUKE'S CHILDREN an outstanding novel. From the outwardly firm but inwardly doubting Duke to the very sincere but frequently erring Silverbridge to the tragic Lady Mabel Grex, who has the young heir in her grasp only to let him slip away, these are well-rounded figures with whom the reader lives intimately and comes to understand thoroughly. With the perfectly depicted ambience of upper-class Victoriana as the setting, this novel is an absorbing work of genius.

Of the many literary biographies I've read, only Peter Ackroyd's "Dickens" seems to me as "definitive" as Ms. Lee's terrifically compelling book. One finishes it with the sense, however illusory (see Janet Malcolm's extraordinary "The Silent Woman" for a convincing argument that it must be), that the Virginia Woolf found in its pages is essentially identical to the actual woman who lived and wrote and died. Anyone with even a slight interest in her must consider this book essential reading. I found it a real page-turner throughout its considerable length despite being unconvinced of Woolf's literary eminence (except for her sparkling correspondence) and finding her character unattractive (i.e. snobbish, frigid, a false friend, etc.) even by the usual standard for writers.

Probably the best bio of Woolf we are likely to see for some time. Lee has succeeded brilliantly and gracefully in that most elusive and troublesome task of capturing the "spirit" of another human being and then conveying that without simplification or reduction. What is most moving is that Lee allows Woolf her complexity and contradictions, her courage and cowardice, her generosity and meaness, without indulging in a sort of inconoclastic glee in smashing received images of Woolf as victim or feminist icon (or any other of the several and various "Woolfs" to be found these days.) Lee's bio is a stunning feat of sympathetic imagination and rational scholarship which ranks with the other "best" bio of the last 20 years or so, Deirdre Bair's marvelous and beautiful "Simone de Beauvoir." I am grateful to both of these writers.

I am taking this book slowly and am nearing the end. It is terrific and I find, on the days I take off from reading it, that I miss Virginia Woolf and want to go back to the "place" that is her life. I thank Ms. Lee for giving me a closer intimacy with Virginia Woolf.

This is a useful book for those interested in literature, wishing to expand their reading, or just looking for a good book.

The book has two main sections.

The first is a series of essays by leading writers in various fields. So Michael Dibdin writes on Crime, Lee Clark Mitchell on Westerns with other essays on other genres and also major countries of fiction such as America, France etc. Each essayist picks 12 examples of the finest books in each field.

These short essays are very useful as introductions to a field or area of writing and point you in the right direction for further reading.

The second section is an A-Z listing of over 1,000 authors with short biographical details and suggested reading.

Taken together these elements make for a most informative guide which I have found very useful to increase my reading and I am sure other lovers of books will find likewise.

There are some glaring ommisions - no Haruki Murakami?! - and some of the entries can be a bit snobbish but overall there is a good balance.

This comprehensive collection of short stories by women authors is both a must as an academic companion and as an everyday reader looking for the best of women's contemporary writing. Nor is it just for the staunch feminists. Lee chooses stories that do not alienate men from the enjoyment. The book contains wider issues than protests against men, motherhood and menstruation. Anita Desai's touching story 'Private Tuition by Mr. Bose' sympathetically shows the male experience of fatherhood and marriage. Muriel Spark's clever and intriguing story 'The First Year of my life'is, also, equally appealing to a wide audience.

The colloection covers cannonised writers such as Margaret Atwood, Nobel Prize Winner Nadine Gordimer and the superb Angela Carter. Refreshingly, the collection encompasses more than just Anglo- American work including international authors such as Pauline Smith, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Katherine Mansfield. The collection, however, does under represent a growing wave of Far Eastern women's writing.

Overall, though, a good and accessable representation of contemporary women's short stories for both the female and male reader.

I'll make this review brief:

Cather didn't know how to write very well when she put this novel together. I have read iher style here as being comparable to Henry James... no way. This novel is too short, too abrupt, and too lacking in the details needed to pull off decent character motivation, somethng I find vital to novels dealing with infidelity and love.

The scenes read as disjuncted and they do not develop very well. If you want a short Cather novel that is better and want to avoid the commonplace Death Comes for the Archbishop, then try "My Mortal Enemy" This shows Cather off at the better end of her career.

Light on plot, heavy on symbolism, and a little predictable, Cather's first novel (a novella, actually) still contains moments of brilliance, especially in its strong characterizations and occasional flashes of wit. The story concerns a Boston architect who is contendedly married but suddenly embarks on an affair in London with an old flame from his youth. He soon becomes tormented over his double life but finds himself unable to resolve his conflicted feelings. Heavily indebted to the Gilded Age novelists, "Alexander's Bridge" reads like a typical first novel from a writer who shows a lot of promise.

Later in life, Cather wrote an essay entitled "My First Novels (There Were Two)," as close to an apology for a first novel as most writers ever make. She admitted that most of the "younger writers" in her peer group followed the manner of Henry James and Edith Wharton, "without having their qualifications"; she "thought a book should be made out of 'interesting material.'" Only while writing her next novel, "O Pioneers!," did she realize that "taking a ride through a familiar country"--the rural Nebraska of her youth--was "a much more absorbing process." Nevertheless, "Alexander's Bridge" hints at the virtuoso novelist she was later to become, and it's certainly better than many writers achieve in an entire lifetime.

This was Willa Cather's first novel, and, while showing glimpses of her later talent, is mostly disappointing. The metaphor of the bridge--the conduit to both the past and the future--figures prominently in this story of a Boston architect torn between his ongoing "mid-life" crisis and his energetic, passion-filled past.

The story contains some heavy-handed symbolism (e.g., the bridge), melodramatic action ("With one [hand] he threw down the window and with the other--still standing behind her--he drew her back against him), and awkward phrasing: "'He was simply the most tremendous response to stimuli I have ever known.'"

Still, the story moves along well, and there is an interesting Henry James-like contrast of Europe and America. The beginning nicely portrays the Boston upper class, and the dramatic conclusion includes passages of great strength and imagination. It is in this last chapter, especially, that her skills are most evident. Willa Cather is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "O Pioneers!" "My Antonia," and other great works. Definitely recommended for those with an interest in her work.