Recent Reads :

The Victorian Album, by Evelyn Berckman.

I picked this up for a negligible amount in a library sale. I was intrigued by the first few paragraphs of the first chapter, in which the narrator describes her interest in Victorian photographs and their subjects. Like her, I've noticed the way that those posed, stiff, high-contrast photographs look entirely different than the glossy, toothily-grinning portraits of today.

Of course, unlike the narrator, I have never had to find lodgings for myself and a grown daughter in an overheated urban housing market. And although I have lived in my fair share of dilapidated buildings, and explored my fair share of dusty attics full of previous tenants' discarded possessions, I have never come across quite the kind of situation that she encounters. No ornately embossed black binders filled with Victorian family photographs, no cranky and socially-ambitious landladies on the premises, no mysterious packages of correspondence to spin a tale of a century ago.

I enjoyed the atmosphere of the tale, and the way the author developed the central linchpin of her tale subtly enough that I, like the narrator, didn't see what was happening until almost too late.