Monday, January 31, 2005

Her Little Majesty: The Life of Queen Victoria by Carolly Erickson

I was very disappointed in this book. I loved Alexandra: The Last Tsarina so much that I expected to delight in this one; but it was barely tolerable. I think the problem is simple: Erickson tried to smush over sixty years on the world stage into less than 270 pages. Consequently, she doesn't tell a story, she just summarizes one. It read too much like a textbook: broad generalizations, head-snapping lurches of time, and little human detail.

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