Imagen del autor

Rebecca Mascull

Autor de The Visitors

5 Obras 128 Miembros 4 Reseñas

Obras de Rebecca Mascull

The Visitors (2014) 52 copias
Song of the Sea Maid (2015) 29 copias
The Wild Air (2017) 25 copias
Miss Marley (2018) 21 copias

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Otros nombres
Walton, Mollie
Género
female
Nacionalidad
UK
Ocupaciones
historical novelist
educator
Relaciones
Lafaye, Vanessa (friend)
Organizaciones
Romantic Novelists’ Association
Society of Authors
Biografía breve
Rebecca Mascull is a novelist of historical fiction and also writes saga fiction under the pen name Mollie Walton. Her first novel, The Visitors (2014), told the story of a deaf-blind child living on her father’s hop farm in Victorian Kent. The Ironbridge Saga, her debut Mollie Walton trilogy, is set across the 19th century in Shropshire, at the heart of the Industrial Revolution: The Daughters of Ironbridge (2019), The Secrets of Ironbridge (2020), and The Orphan of Ironbridge (2021). In 2018, Rebecca completed the ending of her friend and fellow novelist Vanessa Lafaye’s final work, Miss Marley, a prequel to A Christmas Carol. Vanessa passed away when writing the novella and Rebecca worked with HarperCollins to finish writing the last chapters. Rebecca has also worked in education for more than two decades, as a teacher, lecturer and examiner in English, media studies, and creative writing. She has a Masters in Writing and a Postgraduate Certificate in Education. She is a member of the Society of Authors, the Prime Writers, and the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

Miembros

Reseñas

Take Hellen Keller, put her in Victorian England, give her back her sight (after she meets the miracle worker and learns to sign), and then add a dash of war (2nd Boer War), and a bit of the supernatural. A fun read, some very fine prose.
 
Denunciada
zizabeph | otra reseña | May 7, 2023 |
Della Dobbs has always felt like an outsider, even among her own family, and so she becomes very much attached to her unconventional great-aunt Betty, just returned from the United States after more than two decades away. Betty takes Della under her wing and talks to her of the Wright brothers and their flying machines, kindling in Della the yearning to take to the air herself – a ridiculous notion for a woman in the Edwardian age! But Della is not discouraged and pursues her path with determination, though she has to fight against prejudice in a male-dominated world at all times. She finally manages to fulfil her dream, but her way to success is filled with personal losses.

From the first page, the reader experiences the fear and exhilaration, successes and disappointments along with the book’s heroine, as the novel takes them from the end of the Edwardian era to the horrors of the First World War and beyond. It is in turns thought-provoking and inspiring, apart from being a rousing call for the emancipation of women and gender equality, and gives hope to all those oddballs who feel they haven’t got a place in society. It even features an unconventional love story with an effective and affecting role reversal of the typical gender behaviours encountered in novels, even if the path to true love is predictable from the first.

Occasionally the author forgets that the average reader probably won’t be interested in too many technical details and her general descriptions of Della’s experiences surrounding her flying lessons and periods in the air continue for too long; as the reader experiences events through Della’s eyes, I put this down to her infectious enthusiasm for anything aeronautical, though some of these passages began to drag after a while. The author manages to conjure up a picture of a bygone age that feels very authentic, especially the feeling of wonder, astonishment and also inherent danger that the early days of aviation brought, and all her characters appear as if taken from life, and I warmed to Della, Betty and Dudley immediately.

Eventually the plot moves on to the defining years of the second decade of the twentieth century, as any novel set during the beginning of the last century will almost inevitably do. But rather than ticking another box that will secure the book its readership and going mechanically through the motions, the descriptions of the atrocities committed during the war, and how they affected soldiers mentally for years afterwards, are some of the most affecting I’ve read to date, and are the more poignant for their understatement. This may well be because the author has allowed her own family’s experiences to colour this period in history, and it is the more affecting for it. I’m always grateful when an author takes the time to add author’s notes for the interested reader, and these show what a lot of painstaking research has flowed into the book; a recommended reading list would have been welcome.

Young women of today can find a role model in Della, a true pioneer, to pursue their dreams against all odds. I will definitely seek out the author’s two previously published novels, all featuring strong female characters from what I understand.

(This review was written for Amazon's Vine programme.)
… (más)
½
 
Denunciada
passion4reading | otra reseña | Jan 14, 2018 |
The Wild Air by Rebecca Mascull kept me awake till 3am last night. The book was amazing and heartwarming, the one you don't want to finish and yet clung to each page wanting to know what happens next, where the characters may take me, a reader. It's also inspiring and some amount of heartache. Brilliant storytelling!

It is a book which makes you realize the quality time author has set down to write it, the research involved and how smooth the story moves, how easily I have become wrapped around the characters.

I took the book to read without knowing much about it, apart from quickly reading the synopsis, and thus it was a great journey, full of discovery and coziness. The book is a historical fiction about time before, during and after World War I and aspects of woman to take initiative and aspiration to fight for what she believes as her "thing to do" in life, which is flying and being a first pilot woman in England, the country which is still dominated by men world. It also gives amazing detailed and absolutely believable sense you are reading real individual's thoughts on learning to fly, the mechanic side of planes (but don't say in your mind right now, the book is not for you then, because you are completely not interested in that...), because in the book is doesn't sound boring or these details unnecessary additions, it's within the story and it's presented so interesting! At the moment I am really thinking of all the people I know whom to suggest to read this and who would like it.

Della Dobbs starts to take an interest in planes when she is together with her aunt Betty, she is her best friend and inspire her to aim for her dreams and make them real. Her home life is sort of boring and sad, being a third child to her parents and the eldest one at home at the moment and taking care of her two other younger siblings, makes her feel she will never be anything, because her father won't approve it, anything else rather then staying at home and helping the family when needed, but Della dreams higher and although she has never spoken much - planes is the topic she wants to discover and she does with aunt Betty's help and her own will. This book is not just simple great and easy story of how a woman finds her place in men world, especially when it comes for air space, the main character does not reach it all easily, it opens up real human behavior and side of characteristics. I found that the book excellently handles topics such as family stigma, absent fatherhood, love, relationships, friendships, working on ones aims and learning from mistakes, World War One and everything what one may involve - the traumas and aspects, the planes and machinery side of the topic.
… (más)
 
Denunciada
ilonita50 | otra reseña | Sep 29, 2017 |
I LIKED the way Mascull takes a pot boiler, 19th century locale, and tweaks it with a child who is blind, deaf and mute, and, just as a sweetener, sees ghosts. Frankly I was dubious, but about two-thirds of the way through we have a murder mystery and all of the heroine's amazing giftedness bears fruit. This is Mascull's debut and the child's voice isn't too convincing, and the plot isn't far from derivative. However, she more than compensates with a well-researched context in late Victorian England and even the ghosts seem scientifically explicable until it doesn't matter too much any more, because I was just enjoying the story. The novel is paced well, never slows much, and everything is tied up really neatly by the end. So, what I thought was going to be Mills & Boon with a twist, turned out to be less easy to categorise. I look forward to Mascull's follow-up.… (más)
½
1 vota
Denunciada
PhilipJHunt | otra reseña | Mar 23, 2014 |

Listas

Estadísticas

Obras
5
Miembros
128
Popularidad
#157,245
Valoración
3.8
Reseñas
4
ISBNs
22
Idiomas
1

Tablas y Gráficos