Charles Palliser has just gotten too subtle for me. I realize that half the fun of these books is in navigating the obscure social rules of the time, but one thing that’s incredibly helpful in doing that—unless one constantly reads books from this setting—is getting different viewpoints. The single, unreliable viewpoint of this novel makes teasing out the subtleties a bit like reading a foreign language encoded in a substitution cipher. Great fun for Palliser and hard-core devotees, no doubt, but too ambiguous for me. What a complexity of pettiness this novel is. And yet at its essence, it is a story of intent to do grievous harm, even murder.The narrative is set in an era of social mores that have little hope of containing the repressed desires of its characters.It is well written and the plot weaves a rather large tapestry of nastiness. I must admit I got lost amongst the complexity more than once.The characters tend to become rather mean caricatures of themselves, so that the story becomes something of a farce.I think Palliser has executed the work quite well, apart from one aspect I'm left with. Effie doesn't quite ring true in her role. Can't say any more about that as it would be a spoiler.What is astonishing in the story is the ruthless desire to marry into wealth with not a single thought about the character of the man.
Do You like book Rustication (2013)?
Very dark story with an ambiguous ending. Easy to read but somewhat unsettling.
—bahuja90
Middlemarch on acid. gothic with a cold cold heart and a nice twist
—snady
