Review: Steep Yourself In A Romantic Time Gone Bye
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 24, 2010
What a delight to sink into the life and times of Isabella Audley, a young Victorian woman ensconced in the rituals of the English gentry, the constraints of social class, the expectations of propriety.  From the opening sentences of The Gaslight Journal, the reader immerses in the formal language of those long-ago days when bustles adorned the ladies, servants joyfully attended their needs, and society's taut structure challenged a thoughtful woman's quest for romance and fulfillment.  Fans of Jane Austen will enjoy Carla Rene's atmospheric novel.It is well worth spending time with the author's Introduction, as well.  Where Isabella, the character, copes with the nature of her Victorian times, Rene has coped with the nature of her times, pushed to lowest reaches of America's economic social strata by the hard economy.  A woman forced to live in her car out of economic necessity is to be pitied.  A woman who slept in a car with her cats and still had the courage to write this fine novel is to be admired.  Courage, in the book, wore a corset.  Courage, in Meltdown America, wears jeans.