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    The Honey Harlot: A Novel
    The Honey Harlot: A Novel
    The Honey Harlot: A Novel
    Ebook228 pages3 hours

    The Honey Harlot: A Novel

    By Christianna Brand

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    One woman has the answer to history’s strangest maritime mystery in this novel from “one of the great masters of English detective fiction” (Francis M. Nevins).
     Though history would remember her as the Marie Celeste, the ship’s name was Mary Celeste. She was a brig—square-rigged, a hundred feet long, large enough for a crew of nine, and sturdy enough to cross the Atlantic and bring profits home to its masters—a beautiful ship that was destined for tragedy. On December 4, 1872, the Mary Celeste is found adrift off the coast of Portugal with cargo in her hold, food upon her tables, and half-written letters on her captain’s desk. But not a soul can be found on board. This mystery has puzzled maritime scholars for over a century. One woman knows the answers, because she was there from the beginning, and knows the seductive “Honey Mary” the ship was secretly named after. As she retraces the events that lead up to that fateful voyage, she finds that the mind can be as dark and cold as an ocean grave.  
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMysteriousPress.com Open Road
    Release dateMar 5, 2013
    ISBN9781453290460
    The Honey Harlot: A Novel
    Author

    Christianna Brand

    Christianna Brand (1907–1988) was one of the most popular authors of the Golden Age of British mystery writing. Born in Malaya and raised in India, Brand used her experience as a salesgirl as inspiration for her first novel, Death in High Heels, which she based on a fantasy of murdering an irritating coworker. The same year, she debuted her most famous character, Inspector Cockrill, whose adventures she followed until 1957. The film version of the second Cockrill mystery, Green for Danger, is considered one of the best-ever screen adaptations of a classic English mystery. Brand also found success writing children’s fiction. Her Nurse Matilda series, about a grotesque nanny who tames ill-behaved children, was adapted for the screen in 2005, as Nanny McPhee. Brand received Edgar Award nominations for the short stories “Twist for Twist” and “Poison in the Cup”, as well as one for her nonfiction work Heaven Knows Who. The author of more than two dozen novels, she died in 1988.

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    Reviews for The Honey Harlot

    3.5/5

    4 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is a hard, harsh book about being a sharecropper in the mid-20th century American South. Walker's first book pulls no punches about how the humiliations of the Jim Crow system twisted the humanity of black men, who then vented their rage upon their women and children. There is a breath of hope in Grange Copeland's "third life" when he rises to save his granddaughter. Not a book for the faint of heart.
    • 5/5
      Six-word review: Adjectives won't do this novel justice.Extended review:Powerful, gripping, vivid, heartbreaking, intense, unsparing, moving, dark, pulsing with humanity: these are some of the descriptors that spring to mind when I try to give an account of Alice Walker's first novel.I know they don't do it justice. Doing it justice is not within my scope. So let me content myself with doing it honor.I tried to think of any reason why this novel should rate less than five full stars, and I couldn't. Instead, the more I thought about it, the more I felt that awed silence was the best response.However, since silence doesn't work well in a written medium, I'm opting for the second-best response and trying to talk about it. The story of Grange Copeland, a poor black sharecropper in rural Georgia, and his son Brownfield is a story of passion and pain, redemption and hope. Through the lives of its principal characters it depicts unbearable loss and what is perhaps still more unbearable, something dreamed of but never possessed. The limits set on a man's life are as seemingly insurmountable as electrified barbed wire; and yet something resists extinction--something that in the end is undeniably beautiful. What makes this work so remarkable is the author's use of plain, everyday language to reveal multilayered characterizations and expose conflicting motivations.The art of expressing complex emotions and states of mind in simple, direct language is a gift. It's one I can only admire in others; if it can be learned, I haven't learned it. Alice Walker seems to have been born with it. Heightened language is dazzling, to be sure, but so is the art of the pure, clean stroke.Not incidentally, one of the other notable features of this novel is the way it exercises the power of telling. A recurring theme in my reviews is the all-too-common excessive application of the writers' pet maxim "Show, don't tell." And showing is good. But there is a place in storytelling for telling. One of the traits of very traditional stories such as fairy tales and folktales is that there is much telling of the sort that would typically be frowned on in writers' workshops and critique groups today; and yet, appropriately used, it confers on a story a timeless and even mythical quality--the opposite of the much-prized "immediacy" that makes us feel it's unfolding before us as we read. The telling of Grange's history achieves a kind of transcendent luminosity through the very fact that it isn't all scenes and dialogue stitched together with a little narration.It does, however, evoke a real and present emotional response. One of the signs that I have just read a work of exceptional mastery is the feeling that I haven't merely been a spectator of someone else's experience. I've just had an experience myself. I've been through something. And it leaves a lasting impression. The Third Life of Grange Copeland is such a work. (Kindle edition)
    • 3/5
      "The Third Life of Grange Copeland" is a fascinating book that presents the dark side of African American history from the perspective of a single person living during the Great Depression. Alice Walker's writing adds a story filled with tension, drama, and energy to a very sensitive topic in African American history. For example, the author presents themes of domestic violence, racism, and upward mobility, along with how Grange's daughter-in-law, son, and grandchildren struggle under those burdens.
    • 5/5
      This may be Alice Walker's best book. She puts herself firmly in the shoes of a man, and represents him realistically--with all his flaws--yet sympathetically. I've read the book at least three times and I'm always amazed at Walker's portrayal of Grange Copeland. A masterful piece of writing.
    • 1/5
      I read this book in an African-American female novelists class back in undergrad at the U of I. It was so difficult to get through. I felt there was no hope within these pages.
    • 5/5
      I have just finished reading this and it is the only book ever to have made me cry, and I think I've read some pretty amazing books over the years! Knowing that the story is steeped in the reality of racist oppression makes it all the more powerful. Please read this book.

    Book preview

    The Honey Harlot - Christianna Brand

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