![]() ![]() (Sorry to be all mysterious as to the nature of the tragedy – I don’t want to spoil the ending, in case someone is half way through and wondering where it’s all going.) ![]() ![]() I think that is possibly a good thing in a literary sense, in that I was shocked out of my readerly complacency – I thought I was reading merely a satirically humorous tale for the longest time – but I felt it (the final tragic occurrence and its aftermath) ultimately rather artistically troubling, as none of the responses of the characters to the contrived situation felt genuinely satisfactory. ![]() And the ending was not what I’d expected. I found it rather uneven, with moments of sheer brilliance interspersed with numerous rather shaky bits. So, has anyone else read this first novel by E.M. I felt that the author lost his way towards the end, and I couldn’t abide any of the characters by the final chapter, least of all the main male protagonist, young Italiophile Philip. If judged by the appeal of plot and characters alone, this would get about a 4 or so. My relatively high rating of 6 is mainly for the quality of some of the writing. This edition: Book-of-the-Month Club, 1995. ![]()
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