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The Persecution Of Mildred Dunlap (2000)

by Paulette Mahurin(Favorite Author)

4 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

review 1: The synopsis read like a great idea for a novel linking the drip feed of news about the 1895 imprisonment in England of Oscar Wilde for being homosexual, to a story of malicious and spiteful persecution in a small town in Nevada. This however was a great idea that produced a story that was badly written and badly executed that in the main had totally unbelievable characters. The two worst examples were the characters of Josie and Charley. Both, but particularly Josie, were central to the plot and the possible fate of Mildred and Eldra but Josie had all the motivational depth of a pantomime villain whilst I'm sure no more sainted, tolerant and forgiving man than Charley has ever lived on this planet. The author tried to give some of the other characters a bit more depth, b... moreut while I agreed with the views of the more liberal characters like Gus on equality matters, these words just never sounded like they came from their own mouths, but were just the views of the author placed awkwardly on the page. To me, good historical fiction is made when a believable story is placed within the context of real events from the past. In this novel the plot was wafer thin and the links to a series of other worldwide historical events became increasingly tenuous and annoying and in one instance just chronologically and factually wrong. I'm sorry, but Alfred Dreyfus was found guilty in November 1894, 6 months before the judgement in the Wilde trial and to reverse this in time was just a lazy mechanism to add anti-Semitism into the mix in the same way that the Booker T.Washington Atlanta address allowed for characters to express racism on the basis of colour. Indeed US reaction to The Dreyfus Affair was initially muted and the reports of his conviction in the US press often never mentioned the fact that Dreyfus was Jewish, and if they did, it was as a minor footnote. I suspect the author has "confused" this event with the intervention of Emile Zola a few years later with his J'Accuse letter of 1898 that blew L'Affaire Dreyfus into a much more newsworthy event by exposing the anti-Semitism at it's heart. Despite the number of glowing 5 star reviews, this is not great LBGT literature. Try The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith for comparison.
review 2: This is another book that has a wide following that I just don't get.The characters all acted and spoke like modern-day middle schoolers instead of adults in the 1890's. Modern words and phrases in historical fiction is one of my pet peeves i.e. babysit (late 1940's) and "freaking out" (1960's).The book was very repetitive. How many times did we have to hear that Mildred was homely? I also have a problem with the basic premise of the book that something bad would happen if it was discovered that there were not two beds in the house. In the days of small houses and no heat, two spinster cousins sharing a bed would not have been given a second thought. less

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