The Awakening of Miss Prim

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Fiction / General / Sanmartin Fenollera, Natalia
On Shelf At: Malletts Creek Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Sanmartin Fenollera, Natalia	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Sanmartin Fenollera, Natalia	4-week checkout	Due 05-21-2024

Prudencia Prim is a young woman of intelligence and achievement, with a deep knowledge of literature and several letters after her name. But when she accepts the post of private librarian in the village of San Ireneo de Arnois, she is unprepared for what she encounters there. Her employer, a book-loving intellectual, is dashing yet contrarian, always ready with a critique of her cherished Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott. The neighbors, too, are capable of charm and eccentricity in equal measure, determined as they are to preserve their singular little community from the modern world outside. Prudencia had hoped for friendship in San Ireneo but didn't suspect that she might find love-- nor that the course of her new life would offer challenge and heartache as well as joy, discovery and fireside debate. Set against a backdrop of steaming cups of tea, freshly baked cakes , and lovely company The Awakening of Miss Prim is a distinctive and delightfully entertaining tale of literature, philosophy, and the search for happiness -- Unedited summary from the book.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

reminiscent of 19th century works by female authors submitted by aunal on November 14, 2014, 7:01pm I just finished reading "the Awakening of Miss Prim", by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera. It's interesting in that it reads like a 19th century work, not Jane Austen caliber writing, and certainly without Austen's ascerbic observations of her times, not the high drama of the Bronte sisters, but reminiscent of Louisa May Alcott without the latter's sermonizing "asides". Yet I found that the author nicely captured, and identified, a feeling I've had for years, that undiluted appreciation of beauty is sadly lacking, not only in our approach to life and our surroundings, but -more importantly- in our education of our children.
This is a work not to be analyzed and dissected, not to be criticized in its minutae (much in here I disagreed with), but to react to on an emotional level. Recommended.

makes one consider their own awakening submitted by ramcgarty on June 30, 2018, 2:49pm The Awakening of Miss Prim is an interesting read. In the beginning I wondered where the author was going with this plot but as I read on, I enjoyed the conversations and the debates between characters and came to appreciate most of them. It was great fun.

A recent book that feels timeless submitted by terpsichore17 on July 16, 2019, 1:54pm A sweet story, gently unfolding around Prudencia Prim as she somehow stumbles into a job in a town that was formed by folks taking the Benedict Option (despite this coming out 4 years earlier than Dreher's book...but then, the IHP was started in the 70s). Conversations between her, her employer, the children whose library is in her charge, and her various friends in the town address questions of how to read, what to seek from the past, how much to work, and how to love.

Personally, I wish the Nursia section (in which she spends a few months in Italy) were 3 or 4 or 5 times longer, just to unpack how the time changed her, but in any event, her awakening is a gradual thing, and not without its share of struggle.

All that said, I'm sort of starting out from the inside of San Ireneo; I'm curious what other Prim-like people would think.