It seemed the reviewer was almost ashamed that he liked it as much as he did. Bravo to Showalter for bringing Amber back! And here's a review of Forever Amber from the October 21, 1944 edition of The New Yorker. And finally, since reading Defoe's Moll Flanders in college, I've thought of Amber as Moll's much more interesting fictional sister. Amber still tops my list of favorite romantic novels, though she probably would be better classified as historical fiction. And to this day, I can't think of the bubonic plague without thinking of Amber - Winsor did an amazing job of making those historical details feel real and significant. (Isn't that a horrible practice? How could a library violate books like that?) When I finished Amber, I felt I'd finally found what I was looking for and haven't read a romance novel since. And what prompted such an intense response? Well, I was driven back to the summer I was thirteen and tore through romance novels at the rate of one a day - until I found Forever Amber. I found her at a library booksale and her cover had been torn off so she couldn't be resold. (Note to self: must see if KQED posted the audio clip of this interview on their website). I wish Elaine Showalter hadn't mentioned Forever Amber in the interview about her new book, A Jury of Her Peers, that aired on NPR in the Bay Area a few days ago, because the minute she did, I was so distracted by my memories of this book that I didn't hear another word of her interview. A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx
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