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“Once, while at the Bedford Academy, we were made to learn all about the carnivorous plants of the Americas. Most of the other schoolchildren were fascinated by the violent Venus flytrap, with its hinged leaves like a series of tiny bear traps. But I was more intrigued with the pitcher plant, with its much more alluring tubes shaped like upside-down bells, and the simple premise of its sweet nectar bait.”

This is sometimes awfully nice, like here, when Rose is describing her attraction to Odalie (“language too easily corrupts, you see, and falls short”), but it comes just before she protests too much against a “dreadfully Sapphic” reading. Rindell probably stresses too much that we shouldn’t trust her narrator; there are increasing hints that she is institutionalized, and there’s her general tendency toward prudery that’s undermined by her actions (and by her pointing out how her actions contradict her prudery). Despite that, though, this bit strikes the balance between innocence and knowingness just about perfectly.

May 24, 2013, 11:00am   Comments

“You see, I didn’t know then what I know now, which is this: Only the very rich and the very poor enjoy sex with a careless, indifferent abandon. Those of us who find ourselves somewhere in the middle — and here I just note I consider myself to occupy the middle, for although I was raised in an orphanage, the nuns did their best to equip me with the prudish values of a good bourgeoise (I have always quickened my step upon passing the ribaldry of the tenements) — only those of us in the middle class are obliged to maintain an attitude of modesty and discretion when it comes to sex.”

I especially like the way that the syntax emphasizes the diagnosis the character makes of herself here.

May 23, 2013, 11:40am   Comments

» tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.: Flaubertian realism, like most fiction, is both lifelike and...

petitchou:

Flaubertian realism, like most fiction, is both lifelike and artificial. It is lifelike because detail really does hit us, especially in big cities, in a tattoo of randomness. And we do exist in different time signatures. Suppose I am walking down a street. I am aware of a police siren, a…

May 23, 2013, 11:00am  Comments

“Despite the fact that the little girl was three, Franny still cried with the utter abandon of a much smaller infant, and her screams often ranged from inhuman, guttural, animal depths to shrill, ear-piercing heights, all in one breath.”

Largely relevant because at the time of reading this scene, I had just finished a long car trip with a three-year-old in a tantrum-prone phase; I can unequivocally report that a three-year old has much more inventiveness in her crying than any younger child. Which makes this, I think, nothing more than a copyeditor’s factual correction.

Amy Einhorn 05.07.13

May 22, 2013, 1:28pm   Comments

“‘All this talk, this heightened feeling, it’s about more than the Corn Bill,’ he said gently. ‘It’s important because it’s about the future, Miss Julia, when we shall have fellowship among men, and common property, and fair wages. But before that, we must have a cheap loaf. Grub first, then ethics!’”

For all the anachronism jokes — I think my favorite comes toward the end, when the hero explains how circumscribed his actions are as titled aristocracy in the early 19th century by quoting Roger Miller (“I’m a man of means, by no means”), this is the only one that was jarring: a little Brecht in the mouth of a character I don’t think was supposed to be a time-traveler.

May 02, 2013, 11:00am   Comments

» But as the machinery that has enabled what used to be known as “word of mouth” to go online steadily improves and grows, those of us who review books need to stop thinking of ourselves as reporters delivering news and start thinking of ourselves as analysts helping readers make sense of the vast stream of information available about the books our readers want to read.

It may or may not be technology, but I think that we can all agree with Michael Bourne that nobody needs to recap plot for half of a full-page review. Right, NYTBR?

May 01, 2013, 4:28pm  Comments

“Arkady slammed his hands down on his thighs. ‘Why when we talk about time travel do we always have to kill Hitler or not kill Hitler! It is to make Hitler a commonplace! The point is this. You are small and the river is big. Live, love, die, my priest. The river will roll on.’”

And likewise, when Ridgway is able to raise and dismiss the big counterfactual hypothetical question of time travel with aplomb, it’s worth recognizing her deftness. But it also raises the question — without I hope giving very much away — of why the ending of the book ties up so very few strings: if she is able to manage the conventions of historical romance and time-travel with such assurance, why does she only wrap up one of her plots, and leave so many other threads dangling? Is this less of a multi-genre piece than we’re led to expect? Is it a cliffhanger meant to set up a sequel?

May 01, 2013, 11:00am   Comments

“There, just beside him, Mibbs’s face. Mibbs’s breath on his face. Mibbs’s hand on his arm. Mibbs was holding him poised above the pit, as easily as he might hold a spider over a flame, and his eyes burned toward Nick.”

I think that that’s actually “loathsome spider,” right? Ridgway has a lot of fun with anachronism — actually, she seems to have a lot of fun in general, and that makes much of River a lot of fun to read — and it’s very nice to see a writer able to crack jokes like this in a swashbuckling time-travel romance.

Dutton 04.23.13

April 30, 2013, 11:00am   Comments