The Last Days of a Rake
The Last Days of a Rake by Donna Lea Simpson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Or rather, the last night before he carks it.
Not quite the romance novel really, because it deals with the regrets of a reformed rake on his deathbed and how he was a rather scummy scoundrel. A little like Peter O’Toole’s Casanova in the Casanova miniseries, starring David Tennant.
The book itself was quite well written – almost lyrical in places, though short. In the end, I came away feeling quite sad for all the characters. I do like the idea of the book within the book, however. Rather like The Mysteries of Udolpho in Northanger Abbey. Hmm!
Try it out. It’s free after all, in Carina Press. And it only took me two 20-minute bus trips to finish it.
The hidden story
Was reading an article about the narrative trinity – namely,
- the back story
- the present story
- the hidden story
of each character. And while I’ve been spending the whole of August and half of July pulling together the back story and the present story, I never got around to categorising part of the plot as the hidden story.
The hidden story has been defined in a couple of ways. Read more
