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A Proper Education for Girls by Elaine diRollo
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A Proper Education for Girls

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A Proper Education for Girls by Elaine diRollo
Ebook
Apr 14, 2009 | ISBN 9780307452184

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  • Apr 14, 2009 | ISBN 9780307452184

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Product Details

Praise

A Proper Education for Girls is an inspired fantasy, a light-hearted adventure that nevertheless addresses such serious topics as Victorian hypocrisy, sexual repression, and the second-class status of women.”
The Boston Globe

“Alice and Lilian are fabulous, quirky characters, gifted with an engrossing plot. Here’s hoping we will meet them again. A rollicking good time that does not take itself too seriously.”
Kirkus

“DiRollo’s delightfully original debut simultaneously mocks and colorfully depicts British imperialism and the Victorians’ obsessive pursuit of scientific progress.”
Booklist

“Very enjoyable, funny and horrific by turns and with well-drawn, memorable characters. Very much recommended.”
Historical Novels Review

“Alice and Lilian Talbot are my new Victorian heroines.”
Curled Up With a Good Book.com

“A delightful book. I loved diRollo’s supple and spare prose, the marvelous characters (the aunts were small jewels) and that she looked at Victorian eccentricities through a jeweler’s loupe rather than painting a more traditional wide angle Dickensian canvas. “
—Beverly Swerling, author of City of God

"Sexual politics are never far from the surface of Elaine diRollo’s A Proper Education For Girls, but we’re having such a rollicking good time it would be a shame to take it all too seriously. Even as we succumb to the voluptuous atmosphere and simmering eroticism of her language, DiRollo’s suspenseful pacing virtually catapults us from one chapter to the next. An effortless and immensely satisfying read that begins its real work on you after you put it down.”
—Janice Graham, New York Times bestselling author of The Tailor’s Daughter

“Elaine diRollo’s delightful debut novel debunks Victorian morality with the ease and authority of A.S. Byatt and the naughty irony of Margaret Atwood. The plucky Talbot sisters, raised in a hothouse, roots bound and pruned by brutes, are my new heroines. Their triumph over the forces of repression will make the reader cheer.”
—Valerie Martin, author of Property and Trespass

“A book that turns a searchlight on Victorian double standards. Rich in detail, full of sensational surprises from flying machines to tiger hunts, this is a novel to shock and delight. A Thelma and Louise for the mid-nineteenth century.”
—Katharine McMahon, author of The Rose of Sebastopol and The Alchemist’s Daughter

“Wonderful…a spirited and energetic debut, witty and inventive and often just downright addictive.”
Irish Independent

“This is one of the most enjoyable, intelligent and genuinely humorous books I’ve read this year…Elaine diRollo’s debut should be read, and it should be rewarded, too.”
The Scotsman

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