This is, technically, more of a bodice ripper than the costume romance I read just before - a button might be lost, in the most consensual and conversational way. The conversations follow a guarded balance between honesty and tact, in an educated California etiquette. Every so often there's a short letter on the anguish of lost religious faith, like a palate-cleanser between sweet courses.
The "readers guide" of questions is a quaint thing. It opens with an essay by the author comparing his life to the novel, but the " Topics for Discussion " don't mention the author at all or anything about how the writing might shade or evade answers that would have to exist of real people. Farrington isn't an especially plain or transparent writer; the sentences aren't complex but they are much studded with metaphor and lightly with allusions to philosophy and religion.
ISBN: 0-06-251786-4
So wrote clew in Fiction (21st c.). | TrackBack