The Tea Planter's Wife

Product Information

From award-winning author Ann Bennett comes a haunting and powerful novel of love and loss during World War 2 Malaya. 'A vivid account of a brutal period, and a searing exploration of trauma, memory and loss..' The Lady Magazine.

WHSmith Bookmark How many secrets does it take to break the perfect marriage? Two newlyweds; practically strangers, deeply in love, and each hiding a secret from the other…I became frustrated with all the characters at one point or another, and Verity is most certainly a poisonous character, but I often found myself irritated with Laurence, who constantly turned a blind eye to those issues plaguing Gwen and the people causing her such great heartache. I found myself predicting the major plot features quite early in the book, right down to the final reveal. I even told friends "if x happens then I will throw the book away". It did, but I carried on to see just how awfully it would continue. The narrative's repeated structure of half-telling you something, then suddenly revealing the 'secret' was irritating, and some clumsy editing had you wondering where characters had appeared from (Pru at the picnic), or disappeared to (a houseful of party guests), or why it had been included (cutting out a mystery magazine article - presumably the same one referred to later as being read by others, but no confirmation it was the same one). Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. Gwen and McGregor clash on how they think the plantation should be managed. Did you ever sympathize with McGregor’s viewpoints? Did you ever think Gwen was overstepping?

The Tea Planter’s Wife is a story of guilt, betrayal and untold secrets vividly and entrancingly set in colonial era Ceylon.The Tea Planter’s Wife is an exemplary novel, written with a lush literary prose, which pulls me deep into the landscape and historical setting of colonial Ceylan. U doba u kojem se odvija radnja, Ceylon (današnja Šri Lanka) bio je kolonija Velike Britanije u kojoj je „šačica“ britanske elite, uglavnom plantažera, uživala u luksuzu i raskoši svojih imanja, dok je lokalno stanovništvo jedva preživljavalo radeći na plantažama (u jako lošim uvjetima, uz okrutne kazne, često bez ikakve medicinske pomoći) ili kao kućna posluga. Pravila su strogo određena; nema kontakata s mještanima, oni znaju „gdje im je mjesto“ iako, već '40.god. sve je više nemira, rasplamsava se borba za neovisnost te Englezi počinju shvaćati da se stvari mijenjaju i da dolazi novo doba kojemu se moraju (čim prije) početi prilagođavati. So, I'm looking forward to seeing what my friends think about the rest of the books. For me, I was happy to get answers at last, but I still felt that the book story didn't really work for me and my biggest problem was that I never really cared for most of the characters in the book. Gwen just never become an interesting character, and I was constantly irritated by her attitude towards her sister-in-law Verity. And, at the same time, I found Verity highly annoying. So I was constantly frustrated with them both. And, then we have Laurence, Gwen's husband, and to be honest, he was quite dull and even the "mystery" with his dead wife felt a bit dull. The only characters I did like was Gwen's cousin Fran, but she was hardly in the book. Daug dramos, daug paslapčių, daug pagrindinės herojės naivumo. Skaitydama nesuvokiau, kaip galima priimti tokį sprendimą, įsivaizdavau, kad man pačiai turbūt plyštų širdis. Tačiau sąlyginai laimingos pabaigos jie vistiek sulaukia. And then, a shaft of sunlight in the relationship: Gwen falls pregnant. Laurence is overjoyed, especially when twins are diagnosed.