Cover Image: Kipling & Trix

Kipling & Trix

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Member Reviews

this was a really well done fictional novel on Kipling, I loved the way the author was able to stay true to the real people and stay interesting. I had a lot of fun reading this.

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To get right to the point, Hamer's handling of the material left much to be desired. Her characterizations fell flat and the novel's tone was far too academic for my tastes. The pacing drags throughout the telling and I found it incredibly difficult to engage in the story Hamer put forth.

The research is well-done, Hamer obviously cares a great deal for the material, but her style and approach didn’t inspire my imagination and I found it very easy to put the book aside for other publications. I managed to push through to the end, but the story never pulled me in.

At the end of the day, I found the material in Kipling and Trix historically interesting, but I didn’t care for the narration and would have a hard time recommending it forward.

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Unfortunately, the Kindle pdf of this book was unreadable due to formatting issues. A shame as it sounded fascinating!

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Fascinating look at the lives and losses of the Kipling family, centering on the relationship between siblings Rudyard and Trix. When parents Lockwood and Alice left their children behind in British boarding school, they never had any idea what traumatizing horrors their little kids were subjected to, until they grew up and became published writers, which brought shock and humiliation, but according to this account, the family never achieved closure or resolution.

I like the period descriptions of Warwick Gardens, Rottingdean and exotic Lahore and Cape Town. I hadn't realized how successful Rudyard Kipling was, on such a Rolls Royce level. I like the mention of so many celebrities (Wilde, Bram Stoker, the King) just wish their relation to the Kiplings had all been covered as thoroughly as Henry James's was. I love Historical Fiction, but wish Mary Hamer had supplied an explanation by way of an afterward as to which bits were made up and how things were researched. Was Trix really cutting? Did sister Trix and wife Carrie really never get along? The time line wasn't always chronological, which was confusing.

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Thank you to Netgalley for this copy in return for my honest review. Characters are engaging and I was drawn into their story. Well written.

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This was different in the way this was written about Kipling and his sister. It goes from their childhood in India to England and what they experience as children and what happened to them as adults. I kinda had a hard time following what was going on. I think it could have been written a little bit did but user this is the first time I have ever read a out these two! Emotional in some parts but I really didn't enjoy it. I'm so sorry. I received this book from Net Gallery.

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I really enjoyed this book. It was well-written and the story kept me engrossed. The author made me care about the characters and made me feel invested in them.

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As young children in India Rudyard Kipling and his sister, Trix, were happy and close to each other. However when they were sent to England to live with a foster family those ties were stretched. Rudyard grew up to be a famous writer but his sister, although a writer as well, was not as feted. This is a fictionalisation of the relationship between Rudyard and his sister. There are some well-written parts but the whole did not engage my attention as much as I would have hoped

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I found this quite disjointed and tricky to follow.

There is no doubt that Rudyard Kipling and his sister Trix lived an interesting life, but this book manages to gloss over some of it, while going into immense detail in other areas.

I certainly know more about these siblings than I did before, but I didn’t particularly enjoy the writing style.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for my copy of this book.

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If you want to learn about a famous person's life, then the best way to achieve is this is by reading a well written and researched scholarly biography, but as a preamble to this, reading a fictionalised account of a life can be both educational and entertaining. In Mary Hamer's Kipling and Trix we get essentially an account of Ruddy Kipling's life through the prism of his relationship with his often troubled sister, Trix. Both had aspirations when young to write but one would be continually held back and thwarted due to their gender and the strict norms of Victorian society.

This is a fictionalised account of real lives and events so a degree of caution should be exercised regarding the veracity of certain of the events and dialogue, but it does give readers, Kipling's full chronological biographical details and an incredible amount of research has clearly been undertaken.

It is a dramatic story and is particularly strong on recounting how the two young children were sent from their beloved home in India to the cruel care of Mrs. Holloway in Southsea which would have a lasting impact on Kipling's later life.

.The writing is clear and concise and at the end I was certainly intent on reading more about Kipling, a far more complex and nuanced character than is sometimes thought, who Billy Bragg has attempted to reclaim for an inclusive sense of Englishness away from colonialism and jingoism. Well worth a read.

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Great read. The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in.

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