Last week's teaser came from F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, which I mentioned I was struggling with. For me timing can be everything and the wrong book at the wrong time will just leave me resentful, so I have slipped Amory Blaine back into my TBR pile for a later attempt. Being the egotist he is, he probably didn't even notice I was there reading him, so it's just as well. After much consideration (I love choosing new books to read but it can also be hard when faced with so many good possibilities) I've decided on Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters. I've never read anything by Elizabeth Gaskell though I have several of her novels on hand. This is her last and was left unfinished at the time of her death. I haven't read the introduction yet, but it seems I read somewhere that she left notes on how she wanted things tied together at the end, so I'm not sure this will have a proper ending or not.
The blurb calls this "an enchanting take of romance, scandal, and intrigue in the gossipy English town of Hollingsford around the 1830s." I like the sounds of a gossipy little town. Somehow I see this as the makings for a good, absorbing tale. It's about seventeen-year-old Molly Gibson who's widowed father remarries. She becomes close to her stepsister until both girls fall for the same men. I was also contemplating reading George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and even Jane Austen. Who knows, I may pick up some other books along the way, but as this is a nice, fat book, I will hopefully content myself with the story and not need any other.
My teaser is from the beginning of the second chapter (I've literally only started reading) when Molly is still a young girl off to visit the great house of the small town where she lives.
"At ten o'clock on the eventful Thursday the Towers' carriage began its work. Molly was ready long before it made its first appearance, although it had been settled that she and the Miss Brownings were not to go until the last, or fourth, time of its coming. Her face had been scrubbed, and shone brilliantly clean; her frills, her frock, her ribbons were all snow-white. She had on a black mode cloak that had been her mother's; it was trimmed round with rich lace, and looked quaint and old-fashioned on the child. For the first time in her life she wore kid gloves: hitherto she had only had cotton ones. Her gloves were far too large for the little dimpled fingers, but as Betty had told her they were to last her for years, it was all very well. She trembled many a time, and almost turned faint once with the long expectation of the morning."