I have a project going on where I read the books on my bookshelf and try to decide which ones I want to keep and which ones to give up. I must have said before in this book blog that when I was younger I liked Catherine Cookson's romantic books a lot, but nowadays I find them boring.
The Golden Straw begins in 1879, when young Emily Ratcliffe has recently divorced her husband. She inherits the hat business from her employer, but has a nervous breakdown and decides to go on vacation to the French Riviera. There she meets the charming Paul Steerman, and the rest is history.
Most of the book focuses on young Emily's life, and I found it surprisingly interesting. But then we fast-forward several times decades, and I lost interest each time. Especially when there were so many characters that I got confused.
I remembered that in one of Cookson's books, a brother and sister get married, and have children despite being closely related. I thought that the book was this one, but no. Incest flourishes here too, but children are understood to be left out.
Towards the end of The Golden Straw, I started to get annoyed by the fact that a large part of the book was focused on Emily's life, and naturally we were on her side. But in the end, she was made into some nasty and bitter monster, which I think was completely wrong. Besides, you'd think anyone would be bitter when a husband falls in love with his wife's own child...
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