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Book Review of The Ladies of Missalonghi

The Ladies of Missalonghi
reviewed on + 54 more book reviews


The time is just before WWI, the place a small town in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, Australia, and the story is Colleen McCullough at her warmest and most lighthearted.
Who was John Smith, and why was he living alone in the bush? These were the questions asked by the outraged members of the Hurlingford clan when he came and stole thier vally out from under thier self-important noses.
But as much as his arrival seemed to threaten them, it came to matter most to the youngest of the three ladies who lived in the house called Missalonghi. Missy Wright's existence stretched dearily in front of her, the future holding no more promise than the past. Like her mother and maden aunt, Missy was another of Hurlingford clan's manless women- bullied, pited, exploited, patronized, utterly unimprtant in thier scheme of things.
No sensible mentor would have dreamed of advising Missy to consult a wildly romantic novel for answer to plight. But luckily Missy's mentor was a librarian with a taste for purple prose and a scandalous past, who understood that beneath Missy's drab exterior there beat the heart of an enchanting and adventous women.
Taken from the cover.