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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Oct 2015, 368 pages
Paperback:
Oct 2015, 368 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Kate Braithwaite
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Very little is known about Lizzie Burns, the illiterate Irishwoman and longtime lover of Frederick Engels, coauthor of The Communist Manifesto. In Gavin McCrea's first novel, the unsung Lizzie is finally given a voice that won't be forgotten.
Lizzie is a poor worker in the Manchester, England, mill that Frederick owns. When they move to London to be closer to Karl Marx and his family, she must learn to navigate the complex landscapes of Victorian society. We are privy to Lizzie's intimate, wry views on Marx and Engels's mission to spur revolution among the working classes, and to her ambivalence toward her newly luxurious circumstances. Lizzie is haunted by her first love (a revolutionary Irishman), burdened by a sense of duty to right past mistakes, and torn between a desire for independence and the pragmatic need to be cared for.
Despite or because of their differences - in nationality, class, education, and religion - Lizzie and Frederick remain drawn to each other, making Mrs. Engels a complex and high-spirited love story.
Phase the now
1870
I. Fair Warning
No one understands men better than the women they don't marry, and my own opinion—beknown only to God—is that the difference between one man and another doesn't amount to much. It's no matter what line he's in or which ideas he follows, whether he is sweet-tempered or ready-witted, a dab at one business or the next, for there isn't so much in any of that, and you won't find a man that hasn't something against him. What matters over and above the contents of his character—what makes the difference between sad and happy straits for she who must put her life into his keeping—is the mint that jingles in his pockets. In the final reckoning, the good and the bad come to an even naught and the only thing left to recommend him is his money.
Young lasses yet afflicted with strong feeling and seeking a likely subject for a tender passion will say that money has no place in their thoughts. They make exceptions...
The Mrs. Engels of Gavin McCrea's debut novel, is...not Engels' wife in the eyes of the law, even though Lizzie Burns lived with him for many years. This is just one facet of the enormously rich and complex relationship McCrea has imagined around the bare biographical facts that are known about Lizzie. The story is anchored in the eight years Lizzie and Frederick lived together in London — between 1870 and 1878 — but also delves into the past when Frederick was the owner of the Manchester cotton mill that employed Lizzie and her older sister Mary. While the secrets of the past and Lizzie and Frederick's complex feelings toward each other keep the plot moving, the main joy is in Lizzie's character and spirit. Despite struggling with illiteracy, financial dependency, guilt and self-doubt, she remains forward-looking and optimistic...continued
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(Reviewed by Kate Braithwaite).
In Mrs. Engels, Gavin McCrea brings the families of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx to life, pitching the reader into the action with little biographical backstory. The lives of these characters are interesting to learn about, within and beyond the time span covered in the novel.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) and Karl Marx (1818-1183) were both born in the Rhine Province, then part of Prussia, and collaborated in the 1840s after meeting, for the second time, in Paris. One of the cornerstones of their partnership, The Communist Manifesto, was published in 1848, and asserted that human history consistently showed a struggle between the working classes or proletariat and the owners and producers or ...
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