This book is available at the Scranton Books-A-Million Store, and at the Scranton Albright Memorial Library.
Ah, love is in the air, or it should be since the day of love Valentine’s Day, is right around the corner, but for some (this Scranton Book Examiner included) it is a time of reflecting on how great being single is, or you know, listening to Patsy Cline, and wallowing in self-pity, but that’s beside the point. Winter is a time for love (according to that hyperlink about Valentine’s Day), and while some books cherish, and expound on love, others analyze and criticize on a society where love is hard to find without becoming a scandal. “Daisy Miller” is that novel.
Annie “Daisy” Miller is a young, newly wealthy American traveling around Europe with her mother and her nine year old brother to get “Cultured.” While at a hotel in Switzerland, she happens upon a young man named Frederick Winterbourne, who always seems to be two seconds away from either telling her she’s a common floosy, or ripping her clothes off. This goes on all the way to Rome where Daisy becomes a scandal because she is constantly seen walking with an Italian man without a chaperone (gasp!). Mostly, she creates a scandal according to Americans that have lived overseas so long that they are not up to date on the new social order of things across the pond.
Winterbourne, an American studying in Geneva, is caught in the position of judging Daisy on her flirty ways, or claiming that she has no idea of the stir she’s causing because she was taught differently. Well guess what? She’s innocent! And Winterbourne completely screws up, and ends up judging her as an American flirt who means absolutely nothing to him. Daisy (spoiler alert!) ends up dying of Malaria (a broken heart), and Winterbourne goes back to Geneva, and finally, finally figures out that Daisy wasn’t a whore (excuse my French).
While this novel is, yes, extremely depressing, it does shed a humongous light on society, and the failings of judging a book by its cover, or listening to the people that judge books by their covers.
An altogether great read, though reading it to your crush might have adverse effects.
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