Maisie Dobbs

by Jacqueline Winspear | Mystery & Thrillers |
ISBN: 0142004332 Global Overview for this book
Registered by msjoanna of Columbia, Missouri USA on 2/27/2010
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1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by msjoanna from Columbia, Missouri USA on Saturday, February 27, 2010
Received as a birthday gift from my mother.
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From School Library Journal
Maisie is 14 when her mother dies, and she must go into service to help her father make ends meet. Her prodigious intellect and the fact that she is sneaking into the manor library at night to read Hume, Kierkegaard, and Jung alert Lady Rowan to the fact that she has an unusual maid. She arranges for Maisie to be tutored, and the girl ultimately qualifies for Cambridge. She goes for a year, only to be drawn by the need for nurses during the Great War. After serving a grueling few years in France and falling in love with a young doctor, Maisie puts up a shingle in 1929 as a private investigator. She is a perceptive observer of human nature, works well with all classes, and understands the motivations and demons prevalent in postwar England. Teens will be drawn in by her first big case, seemingly a simple one of infidelity, but leading to a complex examination of an almost cultlike situation. The impact of the war on the country is vividly conveyed. A strong protagonist and a lively sense of time and place carry readers along, and the details lead to further thought and understanding about the futility and horror of war, as well as a desire to hear more of Maisie. This is the beginning of a series, and a propitious one at that.

Journal Entry 2 by msjoanna at Columbia, Missouri USA on Monday, February 23, 2015
This book wanted to be too many things at once. It was a historical fiction WWI piece telling a woman's story as a nurse in France. But it also wanted to be a mystery. But all the characters around Maisie are such true-hearted loving folks -- her long-suffering father, her benevolent employers, her sidekick. Maisie has such amazing empathy that she can imitate the body posture of those she is speaking with and feel what they are feeling. I found this "skill" hard to believe in and sort of trite. Still, despite these complaints, I enjoyed the book and would be interested in reading the next in the series.

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