A Certain Age

With a hurricane threatening for the weekend, I jumped to the library and stocked up. A Certain Age (A) by Beatriz Williams kept me completely unaware of the weather. It was that good!!!!!

Based on Richard Strauss’s opera Der Rosenkavalier, Williams sets her story against the backdrop of the roaring twenties, prohibition and post war trauma. Mrs. Theresa Marshall from Fifth Avenue and Southampton begins an affair with a very young man, Octavian. He’s just returned from the war and is lost and searching for something, Theresa is that something.

At the same time, Sophie Fortescue gets engaged to Theresa’s brother through a “cavalier”. Can you guess who that was???? Octavian. Pretty predictably the story continues with a rivalry for the affections of Octavian.

What sets this apart from other historical fiction love stories is that the book opens with the reporting of a murder trail. The person on trail for murder is Sophie’s father. He is accused of murdering her mother. The author very craftily tells her story by delivering the events that led up to the trail. Nothing and no one is as they appear. The story becomes very compelling, drawing the reader right in and keeping you there until the last page.

Thankfully our hurricane was a non-event and the weather provided us with a lovely weekend one that I used to devour this exceptional book. It’s definitely an “all weather” read 🙂