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3.5

I’ve been reading a lot of late-19th-century writing and something told me to take at least a short break, so I requested this from the library. While its prose is intelligent and impressive, I thought of abandoning the book early on. Eventually the structure, which is its main element, grew on me. To fully understand the meaning behind the structure (and the title), you need to read to the end.

The narrator—referenced by name once only—is a great listener, as well as a passive one. The mostly-monologues of acquaintances and friends are recorded as if verbatim but certainly aren’t, as all are told in the same style, supposedly that of the writer-narrator. The bits we glean of the narrator herself are tucked into these almost-soliloquies. Comparisons and contrasts within their tales of loss, bewilderment, disgust, and invisibility reflect upon the little we know of her. Amid her silence are layers of unreliable narrators. The most affecting detail for me came not from any of these people talking at the almost-nameless narrator but from a phone call she receives from her young son, a call she must negotiate while at work in another country. (I realize I provided the emotion.)

I finished this last night, and what did I start later that night? Another 19th-century novel, of course, and I’m much more engrossed in it than I ever was in this. I accept that I am drawn more to character (a hallmark of most 19th-century novels) than to structure (excepting for someone like Virginia Woolf).