PICADOR 2022
My previous Picador reviews: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/?s=Picador&submit=Search
I have just commenced reading this book that was kindly given to me out of the blue for my birthday last January. I do not intend to real-time review it, but when I have finished this giant book in the unknown future, I may comment on it in the comments below.
I have read four chapters so far, and am impressed with its alternate world in USA of 1893, its prose style / characterisation and its conceit of dynastically arranged single sex marriages…
I have now read the first book of three books that make up this whole book. I was compelled to read it quicker and quicker with an attritional obsession, As obsessive as David’s passion for Edward and what he gave up to fulfil it, in this alternate world, a world of constraints and freedoms that one is made to believe in. Its history seems realer than our own! But what do I believe? What David makes himself believe or what Edward tells him? Or both!
The prose style is attritional as well as surprisingly amenable. The leitmotifs, too. Such as the water stain in David’s room and his Heaven of cakes…
And I feel bereft that I may not meet these characters again.