11 One of the greatest compliments I can give this, or any book, is that knowing the point-by-point resolution didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the remaining 400 pages. The one thing I learned: Never ever marry into a North German mercantile dynasty.It’s not so much a novel as a biosphere, with each ecosystem reliant on another within and without, the beginning (as with all life) impossible to chart. 9 A delicious dramatic irony arises at this turning point, because while the young man expects himself to be the hero of a great love story, the reader realizes him to be more of a witless cog in an incisive commentary on the oppressive class system. 8 The incumbent Emperor inevitably incurs the wrath of his people, or the army, or both, and is set upon by his trusted right-hand man, or his wife, or both then a replacement is selected from the family, or from the household staff, or just from people passing by. 7Īround the 400-page mark-and being only halfway through, with the murder not even occurring for another 200 pages-I looked up the plot on Wikipedia.

6 He evokes a humid, gin-soaked Long Island summer day so effectively you can practically feel Daisy pluck the damp fabric of her dress away to let a bit of air in next to her skin. 5 This is stratafiction-layers of mineral-rich story, beautiful up close in their contrasting colors and textures, equally beautiful from far away where the layers form a mountain. 4 Parts of the book are so upsetting-or alternately, so delightful-that I found myself closing the book at the end of a few chapters and holding it in my lap for safekeeping, not quite ready to go on. 3 The reader doesn’t so much dread being in Eleanor’s predicament we fear being Eleanor. The prose style is at once cerebral and deeply felt. The hallmark of the best young adult novels is that they grow with you: at age eight, I couldn’t have cared less about Peggy and Peaceable’s budding romance and instead loved the book for its spooky but historical ghost stories. Truthfully, I hadn’t heard about this book until a woman told me on the roof of a party that it was one of her favorite books of all time, and yes, reader, a) it later became a favorite of mine, and b) I married her.

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