I really dislike modernism sometimes, and this would be one of those times. T.S. Eliot loved it, so I got excited, and I was quite upset when I found a novel with the flimsiest slip of a plot, the most detestable characters in recent memory, and a great deal of philosophizing that both does not fit into the situations it occurs in, and is also absolutely impenetrable. I don’t know if this means I’m too stupid for her, or if she’s just too pretentious for me. I hope it’s the latter.
2/5
The writing is wonderful and the descriptive passages are stuff of creative writing classes. The plot - such as it is - plods and plods. Suddenly in the last 60 pages or so the story picks up and (with a few dull overly descriptive interludes) becomes a page-turner. If only the entire book was like this it would be a classic on the order of say, COLD MOUNTAIN.
ReplyDelete