Mary Rizza

Writer and novelist

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Songs About Fathers And Sons

By Mary Rizza

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Cat Stevens’ Father and Son

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Randy Newman’s So Long Dad

The complex relationships between parents and their children are the enduring stuff of books, plays, music, art. Every human emotion is explored through the prism of this primal bond.

Songs about fathers and sons are shot through with ideas of admiration, rivalry, bafflement, inadequacy, disappointment, rejection, acceptance, regret, anger, forgiveness.

[Read more…]

Gilmore Girls — Rory Gilmore at Chilton Preparatory School

By Mary Rizza

rory1I’ve been re-watching the box set of The Gilmore Girls in preparation for the return of the show and I’m troubled by Rory’s early days at Chilton Preparatory School.

The storylines are strong, the characters are captivating, the witty dialogue whips along at breakneck speed — and yet our enjoyment of The Gilmore Girls’ experiences at Chilton Preparatory School in Hartford, New England comes with a hefty dose of unease.

[Read more…]

The Return of The Gilmore Girls

By Mary Rizza

gilmores2Well, hello there, Lorelai and Rory! Is it really 15 years since we first knew you, and eight whole years since we last met?

It’s good to hear that you’re coming back to town for a brief spell — a chance for us to catch up and find out how the world’s treating you (glancing reference to the heart-wrenching song by the Louvin Brothers, inexplicably left out of the series’ encyclopedic range of cultural references).

[Read more…]

An Agatha Christie Starter Pack — Five Novels to Introduce You to the Queen of Classic Crime

By Mary Rizza

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Whether you have never read Agatha Christie or would like to explore her work a little further, here is a selection of her novels that should give a good idea of the nature of her work and whet your appetite for more.

These books are crammed with typical Christie pleasures:

  • A murder or murders to be solved by Poirot or Marple
  • A juicy cast of suspects
  • A smattering of social comment and satire
  • A helping of psychological interest

Each of these mysteries also has a particular flavour and emphasis which gives it an individual appeal. Perhaps you love logic and puzzles. Maybe you like stories of passion and romance, or are interested in the criminal mind. You might be intrigued by family secrets and relationships.

[Read more…]

Agatha Christie — the Gateway Novelist for Tweens, Teens and YAs

By Mary Rizza

surprisedreader1Acclaimed crime writers such as Sophie Hannah, Val McDermid and many others say that reading Agatha Christie when they were youngsters made them fall in love with mystery fiction. Me too.

In my case, the first Agatha Christie novel I read was Death on the Nile, which plunged me into a grown-up world of passion, sex, jealousy, greed, exotic places and even more exotic characters, and of course, murder. I gasped at the ingenious plot and the incredibly clever twist. I marvelled at the audacity with which the author baffled my expectations and assumptions.

This was the gateway novel which had me hooked and made me crave the deeper, darker, more dangerous and psychotic fixes which other crime novelists continue to provide.

[Read more…]

Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple — Female Literary Detectives

By Mary Rizza

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Geraldine McEwan portrayed Miss Marple in the UK TV series from 2004 to 2009

Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple should be just a quaint period piece. An elderly lady with no professional experience assisting the police in murder enquiries? You must be joking, guv! And yet her popularity endures.

Although it may seem that Christie’s creation is outmoded and irrelevant to present-day attitudes and expectations, in many ways she embodies the recurring motifs of contemporary crime fiction.

[Read more…]

Retro Reads — The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer

By Mary Rizza

pumpkinclassic1Good news — Penguin Books have issued Penelope Mortimer’s 1962 novel, The Pumpkin Eater, as a Modern Classic, reawakening interest in this unique portrayal of a woman-on-the-edge, and introducing it to a new generation of readers.

It’s a compelling read, but not a comfortable one.

To a certain extent, the novel, and the 1964 film, scripted by Harold Pinter and directed with a sure, sensitive and arty hand by Jack Clayton, should provide an entertaining and perceptive look at marriage and relationships, but over and over again it challenges our expectations and overturns our assumptions.

[Read more…]

Go Set A Watchman v To Kill A Mockingbird v Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

By Mary Rizza

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The publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman has inevitably shone a spotlight on To Kill A Mockingbird, and in the glare of present-day sensibilities, both novels are criticised for their portrayal of attitudes to race, justice, equality.

Mockingbird’s lack of real radicalism and its blinkered, sanitised view of society is highlighted by the perspective presented by the later publication as the grown-up Scout discovers her father was not the champion of civil rights she had thought him to be.

For many of us, however, nuanced discussions of ideology are eclipsed by visceral cries of outrage at Watchman’s treatment of our favourite characters.

[Read more…]

Farewell To A Female Friendship — Kalinda and Alicia in The Good Wife

By Mary Rizza

aliciakalindabar1aThe friendship between Alicia Florrick and Kalinda Sharma in The Good Wife TV series shouldn’t work. It doesn’t tick any of the boxes commonly associated with fictional depictions of female friends.

For a start, they are an evenly matched pair — different, but equal presence, authority and appeal. No stunning or at least quirkily attractive dominant figure with overweight but feisty best friend here, thank you very much.

[Read more…]

Hats Off To The Shoes We Wore

By Mary Rizza

rite1For girls of a certain age, our lifelong love affair with shoes displays many of the characteristics of our real life love affairs – pleasure, delight, pain, uncertainty, anxiety, regret.

From our early years, we were alerted to the nuances of shoe-wear and the subtleties of class and coolness signified by our choices.

[Read more…]

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Popular posts

  • Parents And Children in Shakespeare — Polonius The Helicopter Parent
  • Best Friends in Fiction: Charlotte and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice
  • Story Songs: The Night Hank Williams Came To Town
  • Female Literary Detectives — The Penny Wanawake Series by Susan Moody
  • Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park — Hats Off To Jane Austen’s Flawed Women
  • Gilmore Girls — Rory Gilmore at Chilton Preparatory School
  • Songs About Being Stood Up
  • Revisiting the Gilmore Girls — Emily and Lorelai
  • Is Arthur Seaton All Right? Saturday Night And Sunday Morning (Retro Films)
  • What’s it Really All About, Alfie?

Recent Posts

  • What’s it Really All About, Alfie?
  • Hello Dolly — How Widows TV series took women away from being gangsters’ molls and made them the gangsters
  • Female Literary Detectives — The Penny Wanawake Series by Susan Moody
  • Is Arthur Seaton All Right? Saturday Night And Sunday Morning (Retro Films)
  • What Became of the People We Used to Be? The Timeless Tale of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads
  • A Brown Study — The Television Series of A Kind of Loving
  • In the Theatre of Life with The Young Vic — A Kind Of Loving by Stan Barstow (Retro Reads)
  • How Picture Postcards Present a Snapshot in Time
  • Hats Off to the Clive James and Pete Atkin Songbook
  • Songs About Real Places: Glen Campbell’s Town Trilogy — Galveston, Wichita Lineman and By The Time I Get To Phoenix
  • How Ken Loach’s Raining Stones and Jimmy McGovern’s Broken address the issues of a split society 24 years apart
  • Songs About Being Stood Up
  • 1960s Films: Bitter Harvest — Pounding the pavements of Patrick Hamilton’s 20,000 Streets
  • The Middle-Class Struggle —
    The Millstone by Margaret Drabble
  • 40 years on, Abigail’s Party is still very much a Play for Today
  • Where Your Art’s On Your Sleeve — Lessons Learned from Album Notes
  • The Girl in the Dress Called Sin — The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden
  • The Best of Everything
    versus
    Sex and the City
  • Can you really go home again to Stars Hollow hygge and the Gilmore Girls?
  • Hats Off To Cat Among The Pigeons by Agatha Christie

Site Navigation

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  • About
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  • Novels by Mary Rizza
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Archives

Recent Posts

  • What’s it Really All About, Alfie?
  • Hello Dolly — How Widows TV series took women away from being gangsters’ molls and made them the gangsters
  • Female Literary Detectives — The Penny Wanawake Series by Susan Moody
  • Is Arthur Seaton All Right? Saturday Night And Sunday Morning (Retro Films)
  • What Became of the People We Used to Be? The Timeless Tale of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads
  • A Brown Study — The Television Series of A Kind of Loving
  • In the Theatre of Life with The Young Vic — A Kind Of Loving by Stan Barstow (Retro Reads)
  • How Picture Postcards Present a Snapshot in Time
  • Hats Off to the Clive James and Pete Atkin Songbook
  • Songs About Real Places: Glen Campbell’s Town Trilogy — Galveston, Wichita Lineman and By The Time I Get To Phoenix

Site Navigation

  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Novels by Mary Rizza
  • Contact

Popular posts

  • Revisiting the Gilmore Girls — Emily and Lorelai
  • Female TV detectives: Cagney and Lacey v Scott and Bailey
  • Gilmore Girls — Rory Gilmore at Chilton Preparatory School
  • Female TV detectives: Gillian Anderson in The Fall v Patricia Hodge in Jemima Shore Investigates
  • Best Friends in Fiction: Charlotte and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice
  • Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park — Hats Off To Jane Austen’s Flawed Women
  • TV female legals: The Good Wife (and Diane and Kalinda)
  • Retro Reads: Ray Bradbury’s The Pedestrian
  • Can you really go home again to Stars Hollow hygge and the Gilmore Girls?
  • Parents And Children in Shakespeare — Polonius The Helicopter Parent

Archives

Novels by Mary Rizza

livingdollcoveroctCharlotte's Wedding by Mary Rizzawestbeachsummercoverjloveyoumakecover1013aj

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