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An Error of Judgement
Setter, an eminent Harley Street consultant, is trusted and admired by his circle of friends, devoting himself to the rehabilitation of the lonely and the misunderstood. But deep within himself Setter recognizes a latent streak of sadistic cruelty which enables him to perceive the truth about a delinquent youth whom he suspects of having taken part in a particularly repellent and senseless crime. It is for Setter to choose a punishmentand enforce it. An Error of Judgement is a subtle study of human weakness and conflict. Partly a wry social comedy and partly a study in good and evil, it is brilliantly written and observed, assured and skillful, and a truly modern work.
- GenresFiction
220 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
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About the author
Pamela Hansford Johnson
66 books18 followersPamela Hansford Johnson was born in 1912 and gained recognition with her first novel, This Bed Thy Centre, published in 1935. She wrote 27 novels. Her themes centred on the moral responsibility of the individual in their personal and social relations. The fictional genres she used ranged from romantic comedy (Night and Silence, Who Is Here?) and high comedy (The Unspeakable Skipton) to tragedy (The Holiday Friend) and the psychological study of cruelty (An Error of Judgement). Her last novel, A Bonfire, was published in the year of her death, 1981.
She was a critic as well as a novelist and wrote books on Thomas Wolfe and Ivy Compton-Burnett; Six Proust Reconstructions (1958) confirmed her reputation as a leading Proustian scholar. She also wrote a play, Corinth House (1954), a work of social criticism arising out of the Moors Trial, On Iniquity (1967), and a book of essays, Important to Me (1974). She received honorary degrees from six universities and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She was awarded the C.B.E. in 1975.
Pamela Hansford Johnson, who had two children by her first marriage with journalist Gordon Neil Stewart, later married C. P. Snow. Their son Philip was born in 1952.
She was a critic as well as a novelist and wrote books on Thomas Wolfe and Ivy Compton-Burnett; Six Proust Reconstructions (1958) confirmed her reputation as a leading Proustian scholar. She also wrote a play, Corinth House (1954), a work of social criticism arising out of the Moors Trial, On Iniquity (1967), and a book of essays, Important to Me (1974). She received honorary degrees from six universities and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She was awarded the C.B.E. in 1975.
Pamela Hansford Johnson, who had two children by her first marriage with journalist Gordon Neil Stewart, later married C. P. Snow. Their son Philip was born in 1952.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 6, 2021
Well, this was rather an odd book. Her writing has been compared to that of Elizabeth Taylor and I can see where that comparison comes from; it's one of those novels where the things that happen are only important in so far as they affect the characters, big things do happen, but that isn't where the emphasis lies and it could hardly be described as action packed. Told in first person narrative by Victor about Setter, a Doctor he comes into contact with, and the other people that come into Setters orbit. Setter became a doctor because he recognised in himself an ugly tendency to enjoy inflicting pain on people, becoming a heeler is meant to cure him of that need.
A curious read and I would like to try more of her work, but it seems to be somewhat difficult to get hold of, my library does have one more so I'll try that one soon(ish).
A curious read and I would like to try more of her work, but it seems to be somewhat difficult to get hold of, my library does have one more so I'll try that one soon(ish).
July 6, 2019
It’s been many years since I read Brighton Rock. I did not like it very much and it put me off Greene for a long time. Over the years I kept reading praise for the book and so I kept thinking about it and why I was so dissatisfied with it. After considering the essence of what critics had to say about the novel, I decided that the problem was that if the reader did not believe that Pinkie, the conscience-less killer in the story, had an immortal soul that could suffer eternal damnation, the novel was just a sordid and pointless tale of crime and misplaced affection.
I could have saved myself a lot of cogitation by just looking up the novel in A Reader's Guide To The Twentieth Century Novel, which says
I guess the theme of this book is the problem of evil in a godless world. The characters often use a theological framework in discussing this while at the same time disclaiming any religious belief; even Malpass, an Anglican vicar (no Catholics here), can't believe in the doctrine of damnation. For example, the novel’s central character, Dr. William Setter, an avowed atheist, imagines himself judged favorably by God because of his life of helping to cure people of physical ills while at the same time refraining from any kind of harmful act; but he claims this would be “an error of judgement” because in his heart he is obsessed by the desire to cause suffering, a desire he suppresses at great emotional cost. In the absence of God, Setter must judge himself, which eventually leads to him judging another: the “Pinkie” figure in the book, Sammy, a young delinquent who may have participated in kicking a drunken old woman to death. Sammy eventually tells Setter about his participation in the crime and Setter believes him even though he knows Sammy has a tendency to lie about many aspects of his life; this may be the novel’s final “error of judgement”.
Hansford Johnson makes Setter a figure of fascination for the reader by keeping him offstage and incommunicado for much of the book. The stage is monopolized by her narrator Victor who clumsily tells the story of his own fascination with Setter against the narrative of his rocky relationship to his wife Jenny and her live-in mother Stephanie in addition to his dealing with various misfits at the engineering firm where he is personnel officer, all of whom, family and co-workers, eventually find themselves influenced by Setter.
Victor is explicitly identified as an unreliable narrator when Setter says to him
I could have saved myself a lot of cogitation by just looking up the novel in A Reader's Guide To The Twentieth Century Novel, which says
As a thriller, the book is effective, cynical, squalid and brutal, but its ultimate success (like that of Brideshead Revisited, 1945, by Greene’s friend and co-religionist Evelyn Waugh) depends upon the reader’s acceptance of the theology behind it.All this as a prelude to saying that An Error of Judgement is a kind of agnostic Brighton Rock.
I guess the theme of this book is the problem of evil in a godless world. The characters often use a theological framework in discussing this while at the same time disclaiming any religious belief; even Malpass, an Anglican vicar (no Catholics here), can't believe in the doctrine of damnation. For example, the novel’s central character, Dr. William Setter, an avowed atheist, imagines himself judged favorably by God because of his life of helping to cure people of physical ills while at the same time refraining from any kind of harmful act; but he claims this would be “an error of judgement” because in his heart he is obsessed by the desire to cause suffering, a desire he suppresses at great emotional cost. In the absence of God, Setter must judge himself, which eventually leads to him judging another: the “Pinkie” figure in the book, Sammy, a young delinquent who may have participated in kicking a drunken old woman to death. Sammy eventually tells Setter about his participation in the crime and Setter believes him even though he knows Sammy has a tendency to lie about many aspects of his life; this may be the novel’s final “error of judgement”.
Hansford Johnson makes Setter a figure of fascination for the reader by keeping him offstage and incommunicado for much of the book. The stage is monopolized by her narrator Victor who clumsily tells the story of his own fascination with Setter against the narrative of his rocky relationship to his wife Jenny and her live-in mother Stephanie in addition to his dealing with various misfits at the engineering firm where he is personnel officer, all of whom, family and co-workers, eventually find themselves influenced by Setter.
Victor is explicitly identified as an unreliable narrator when Setter says to him
I can talk to you, Vic, because you understand nothing, not one single thing, dear Vic, not one single bloody thing.The narration is also heavily larded with literary allusions, though none seem out of place for the class of the speaker; I had to Google a reference to Soames and Irene (which turns out to be from The Forsyte Saga), but got many of the more mainstream ones such as
His face burst into flame. Bardolph-colour overflowed it, throwing into colour of terrible intensity the little rounded blue of his eyes.This one, which I assume is an allusion to something, left me puzzled:
In the autumn Roger [Setter’s son], who had been on holiday with friends on the Dalmatian coast, came back swearing he’s seen his father.
When Emily [Setter’s ex-wife] told me this, I said, ‘Not in a sloop off Trieste.’
She looked uncomprehending.
November 8, 2023
This was my second book by PHJ, previously I had read Cork Street, Next to the Hatter's. That was a comic novel and I didn't enjoy it at all but I remember enjoying the writing in parts and wondering if her serious novels would be better suited to my tastes. I'm pleased to say that, at the very least, this one is. This is about marriage, morality, and culpability.
Our narrator is a married man who during the course of the book reaches a crisis point in his marriage. There is also a senseless and brutal murder, an intelligent Harley Street Doctor with dark thoughts and a splash of cuckolding on the side but it's a sharp concise novel that never gets bogged down in the philosophies the characters espouse.
Good, thoughtful, and readable stuff.
Our narrator is a married man who during the course of the book reaches a crisis point in his marriage. There is also a senseless and brutal murder, an intelligent Harley Street Doctor with dark thoughts and a splash of cuckolding on the side but it's a sharp concise novel that never gets bogged down in the philosophies the characters espouse.
Good, thoughtful, and readable stuff.
March 28, 2021
I am not only utterly puzzled at the existence of this book, I'm more puzzled by my choice to buy it. Some would say it was an error of judgment(:.
February 6, 2013
I've been reading books from the past recently and this was the one that I enjoyed the most. I found it a gripping story and beautifully written. It was published in 1962 and is set in the period just after the second world war. It's written from the point of view of a man in his early forties and is about a doctor with whom he and his wife become involved.
As an aside, what is odd for someone reading the novel in 2013 is that the man's wife does not work in spite of being childless. In those days married women often stayed at home.
The narrative moves along well. All sorts of strange things happen and we gradually learn about the doctor, his weird obsession and the dire consequences of this.
Highly recommended.
As an aside, what is odd for someone reading the novel in 2013 is that the man's wife does not work in spite of being childless. In those days married women often stayed at home.
The narrative moves along well. All sorts of strange things happen and we gradually learn about the doctor, his weird obsession and the dire consequences of this.
Highly recommended.
October 22, 2018
I can’t remember buying this book, I’m not even sure why I would buy it, nor do I remember putting it on my shelf but it fell out while I was reaching for another one - so I read it. It’s a peculiar and disconcerting experience.
The key to this unnerving tone is the narrator. In the first page we meet a man who claims he isn’t a hypochondriac and has had many jobs but isn’t a failure. He then quickly reflects that he might be something of a hypochondriac, something of a failure and what’s more is fastidious and can’t (or won’t) do anything to change it. This herky-jerky, impression then reflection is typical of the narrator which makes him seem untrustworthy yet intriguing. Another example of the tricksy nature of the narrator is when he describes someone in a way that leads the reader to expect them to be a male when they are in fact female. Nothing particularly comes out of the narrator’s lack of trustworthiness but it makes the whole book off-kilter.
The person he sees about his phantom pains is a Harley Street practitioner called Setter. He is an avuncular man who calms our narrator (later named Victor). He works as a personnel manager in a car firm and is impressed by Setter that he sends an underperforming employee to him. Later, he happens to meet Setter and a party in New York but he is not the confident GP he met before but a man crying over his wife falling out of love with him. In one of the many odd little touches this crying is described as ‘organic’ and is regarded by Victor as completely out of place with a man.
Victor himself is no stranger to marriage trouble, he is married to Jenny, whose mother is sick and a burden to them. It is in his relationship to Jenny that I had the most cause to dislike him. He claims ownership of her and keeps making claims that she loves him back as deeply (though his shifty tone makes us doubt this.) He talks about her like she is a child, often refers to her childlike ways, her innocence and even her simple nature. When he returns from New York and they continue an argument that she should have been by their side, she gets distracted by an elephant walking past outside advertising a circus. It may be the only time I have ever read a book where there is a literal elephant (not quite) in the room.
Victor, Jenny and her mother fall into friendship with Setter and his wife, Emily. It’s a strange friendship as none of them seem to like each other but become friends anyway. It’s almost as if Setter, in particular, is invading their lives. He sets up a club for the unlikeable people of the world that include Victor and Jenny’s mother (but not initially Jenny) and also various people Victor works with and has met. There is a great push in the story to explain how boring and seemingly pointless the club is but how all the members keep going anyway and really seem to enjoy it. This all surrounds the quiet and seemingly benign Setter, who still casts eery shadows around the story.
The more we find out about Setter, the more eery he becomes. He is a self-confessed sadist, who has throughout his life managed to hold back his most sadistic urges. This doesn’t stop him trying to rape his wife when she divorces him however. The rape isn’t carried through as she kicks him in the gonads and the narrator (the author?) states he doesn’t believe that rape is possible because every woman has access to the same technique - a deeply unpleasant notion.
Another deeply unpleasant moment is the bit when Jenny and Victor are on holiday with the Setters and Jenny is phoned and told that her mother has died. Setter describes the newly dead mother as ‘a selfish-bitch’ who wouldn’t give Victor and Jenny space and warns Jenny against being a ‘moping bitch’ and grieving too much. She does grieve a lot, one of the most protracted (and realistic) descriptions of grief I have ever read, throughout the next hundred or so pages. The narrator, Victor gets fed up with her and she starts to have an unrequited crush on Setter.
The plot as described in the blurb kicks in about 70 pages in. One of the people from the group, Sammy, is suspected of killing an old drunk lady and kicking out her eyes. Setter gets close to him, extracts a (possibly false) confession and then buddies up to him, taking him to France.
At the end we discover that Setter tricked Sammy into killing himself, the trip to France being a final glimpse of happiness for the young psychopath. It is also heavily implied that he talked Jenny’s mother into doing the same. As such he gave in to his evil nature but also (so the novel wants you to feel) done it for good reasons and in the kindest way possible. Setter felt it would have been ‘an error of judgement’ to go to heaven, considering the evil within him and so has committed evil deeds to be sent to hell where he feels he belongs.
It’s a gripping yet distasteful book. The characters are not only unlikeable, they are dislikeable. It’s like the narrator (author?) can only see the bad in people. Pamela Hansford Johnson has a sharp way with words, I particularly liked the following description of conversation at a party; “She was eager to get back to a discussion of her psychological problems and mine, preferably hers.” So much of the block is a little unclear though, I had to re-read parts and the worldview encapsulated by the book so oppressive and unpleasant that although I would say it was a good book, it was not one I much enjoyed.
The key to this unnerving tone is the narrator. In the first page we meet a man who claims he isn’t a hypochondriac and has had many jobs but isn’t a failure. He then quickly reflects that he might be something of a hypochondriac, something of a failure and what’s more is fastidious and can’t (or won’t) do anything to change it. This herky-jerky, impression then reflection is typical of the narrator which makes him seem untrustworthy yet intriguing. Another example of the tricksy nature of the narrator is when he describes someone in a way that leads the reader to expect them to be a male when they are in fact female. Nothing particularly comes out of the narrator’s lack of trustworthiness but it makes the whole book off-kilter.
The person he sees about his phantom pains is a Harley Street practitioner called Setter. He is an avuncular man who calms our narrator (later named Victor). He works as a personnel manager in a car firm and is impressed by Setter that he sends an underperforming employee to him. Later, he happens to meet Setter and a party in New York but he is not the confident GP he met before but a man crying over his wife falling out of love with him. In one of the many odd little touches this crying is described as ‘organic’ and is regarded by Victor as completely out of place with a man.
Victor himself is no stranger to marriage trouble, he is married to Jenny, whose mother is sick and a burden to them. It is in his relationship to Jenny that I had the most cause to dislike him. He claims ownership of her and keeps making claims that she loves him back as deeply (though his shifty tone makes us doubt this.) He talks about her like she is a child, often refers to her childlike ways, her innocence and even her simple nature. When he returns from New York and they continue an argument that she should have been by their side, she gets distracted by an elephant walking past outside advertising a circus. It may be the only time I have ever read a book where there is a literal elephant (not quite) in the room.
Victor, Jenny and her mother fall into friendship with Setter and his wife, Emily. It’s a strange friendship as none of them seem to like each other but become friends anyway. It’s almost as if Setter, in particular, is invading their lives. He sets up a club for the unlikeable people of the world that include Victor and Jenny’s mother (but not initially Jenny) and also various people Victor works with and has met. There is a great push in the story to explain how boring and seemingly pointless the club is but how all the members keep going anyway and really seem to enjoy it. This all surrounds the quiet and seemingly benign Setter, who still casts eery shadows around the story.
The more we find out about Setter, the more eery he becomes. He is a self-confessed sadist, who has throughout his life managed to hold back his most sadistic urges. This doesn’t stop him trying to rape his wife when she divorces him however. The rape isn’t carried through as she kicks him in the gonads and the narrator (the author?) states he doesn’t believe that rape is possible because every woman has access to the same technique - a deeply unpleasant notion.
Another deeply unpleasant moment is the bit when Jenny and Victor are on holiday with the Setters and Jenny is phoned and told that her mother has died. Setter describes the newly dead mother as ‘a selfish-bitch’ who wouldn’t give Victor and Jenny space and warns Jenny against being a ‘moping bitch’ and grieving too much. She does grieve a lot, one of the most protracted (and realistic) descriptions of grief I have ever read, throughout the next hundred or so pages. The narrator, Victor gets fed up with her and she starts to have an unrequited crush on Setter.
The plot as described in the blurb kicks in about 70 pages in. One of the people from the group, Sammy, is suspected of killing an old drunk lady and kicking out her eyes. Setter gets close to him, extracts a (possibly false) confession and then buddies up to him, taking him to France.
At the end we discover that Setter tricked Sammy into killing himself, the trip to France being a final glimpse of happiness for the young psychopath. It is also heavily implied that he talked Jenny’s mother into doing the same. As such he gave in to his evil nature but also (so the novel wants you to feel) done it for good reasons and in the kindest way possible. Setter felt it would have been ‘an error of judgement’ to go to heaven, considering the evil within him and so has committed evil deeds to be sent to hell where he feels he belongs.
It’s a gripping yet distasteful book. The characters are not only unlikeable, they are dislikeable. It’s like the narrator (author?) can only see the bad in people. Pamela Hansford Johnson has a sharp way with words, I particularly liked the following description of conversation at a party; “She was eager to get back to a discussion of her psychological problems and mine, preferably hers.” So much of the block is a little unclear though, I had to re-read parts and the worldview encapsulated by the book so oppressive and unpleasant that although I would say it was a good book, it was not one I much enjoyed.
October 17, 2021
An interesting dynamic of well drawn character all crashing against one another and doing much harm in the process. Very much part of its time with some hilarious middle class attitudes which were old fashioned at the time a fault in the author who was about the same age as my father but who didn't share her pretensions. Her attitude to the working class and their job opportunities reveal a particularly British malaise. Nevertheless I enjoyed reading about Setter's world though not perhaps as the author intended.
May 4, 2018
3.5 I don't think novels by Hansford Johnson are easy to get a hold of, but I would encourage any fan of British lit to try her. This novel tells of the relationships of two couples, various other characters, and ultimately, a murder. Although this is a very dark book, there are many lines that are laugh out loud funny. Hansford Johnson does a great job of creating a mysterious atmosphere in this haunting book.
December 29, 2014
I enjoyed this very clever novel. It seems something of a trifle in the initial going, but it slyly begins to compel consideration (and appreciation).
Against the backdrop of his own domestic situation (a live-in mother-in-law who dies and a guilty wife who grieves her death with anger and bitterness), the first-person narrator Victor tells the story of a Harley Street consultant, William Setter, prominent enough to be in line for knighthood. Setter, however, has his own idea of what's appropriate for him, and he quits consulting, starts an informal chat group, ends his marriage, takes under his wing a young man, then engineers that man's suicide.
Setter is for the narrator and the reader an enigma, a man who apparently has everything going for him—beautiful home in the country, beautiful wife, a good practice, wealth, and "prospects"—but step by step he gives up each of these attainments and by novel's end, before he vanishes, lives squalidly, alone. Victor is there to chart Setter's descent, and he shares with him several long colloquies. In the first of these, which Victor calls Setter's Story #1, Setter sets out to describe his nature, his discontent, and alludes to what will be God's "error of judgement" if he is allowed access to Heaven. Setter believes himself prone to evil, to inflicting for his own delight pain onto others. Trained as a surgeon, he gave this up after an episode in which he necessarily caused a patient pain, though in the process relishing the infliction.
Setter's goal, then, is to fulfill his nature, to so something that will make it easy for God to judge him appropriately. The irony is that this action is muted and contradicted by Setter's own good, even generous behavior. Rather than, say, burn down an orphanage, Setter chooses to dispose of a person who he's determined has no inner life, no ability to understand or regret pain he causes. This individual is a young man who gravitates into Setter's circle via Victor's friend, Malpass, an Anglican priest. Malpass is certain that there is something shifty about this young man, Sammy, and once within the space of the informal discussion group, Setter, too, begins to think he may have had something to do with a recent vicious killing of an old woman.
Even as Setter divorces his wife Emily, Victor continues to hear a good deal about Setter, because Emily remains friendly to Jennie, Victor's wife. Emily has been for a long time a serial adulterer, and she takes up with her latest, Bertrand, when Setter leaves her. Jennie is still not able to shake doubts about her role in her mother's sudden, albeit natural death, and she is drawn to Setter as the only person who can calm her. As she learns more of Setter from Victor and Emily, she continually vacillates from admiration and affection to scorn and revulsion (a turmoil which mirrors her need to act out her emotions or to civilly suppress them).
Victor chronicles Setter's account of his dispatch of Sammy in Setter's Story #3, a tale which includes an interlude in France, where Setter had hoped to expose Sammy to some cultural pleasures, culinary, theatrical, and artistic. Not long after, Victor learns from Emily that Setter's walked away from it all, vanished, with no intention of ever returning. And not long after that revelation, Jennie announces that the scales have fallen from her eyes, that she again loves Victor as formerly. He wryly notes: "But I was glad for us both that Jenny meant what she had said, because if she went on believing she was in love with me it would be almost as good as if she really were so. ... Really good acting becomes a kind of truth."
It was Setter's "error of judgement" that he could not himself submit to the same sort of acting.
Against the backdrop of his own domestic situation (a live-in mother-in-law who dies and a guilty wife who grieves her death with anger and bitterness), the first-person narrator Victor tells the story of a Harley Street consultant, William Setter, prominent enough to be in line for knighthood. Setter, however, has his own idea of what's appropriate for him, and he quits consulting, starts an informal chat group, ends his marriage, takes under his wing a young man, then engineers that man's suicide.
Setter is for the narrator and the reader an enigma, a man who apparently has everything going for him—beautiful home in the country, beautiful wife, a good practice, wealth, and "prospects"—but step by step he gives up each of these attainments and by novel's end, before he vanishes, lives squalidly, alone. Victor is there to chart Setter's descent, and he shares with him several long colloquies. In the first of these, which Victor calls Setter's Story #1, Setter sets out to describe his nature, his discontent, and alludes to what will be God's "error of judgement" if he is allowed access to Heaven. Setter believes himself prone to evil, to inflicting for his own delight pain onto others. Trained as a surgeon, he gave this up after an episode in which he necessarily caused a patient pain, though in the process relishing the infliction.
Setter's goal, then, is to fulfill his nature, to so something that will make it easy for God to judge him appropriately. The irony is that this action is muted and contradicted by Setter's own good, even generous behavior. Rather than, say, burn down an orphanage, Setter chooses to dispose of a person who he's determined has no inner life, no ability to understand or regret pain he causes. This individual is a young man who gravitates into Setter's circle via Victor's friend, Malpass, an Anglican priest. Malpass is certain that there is something shifty about this young man, Sammy, and once within the space of the informal discussion group, Setter, too, begins to think he may have had something to do with a recent vicious killing of an old woman.
Even as Setter divorces his wife Emily, Victor continues to hear a good deal about Setter, because Emily remains friendly to Jennie, Victor's wife. Emily has been for a long time a serial adulterer, and she takes up with her latest, Bertrand, when Setter leaves her. Jennie is still not able to shake doubts about her role in her mother's sudden, albeit natural death, and she is drawn to Setter as the only person who can calm her. As she learns more of Setter from Victor and Emily, she continually vacillates from admiration and affection to scorn and revulsion (a turmoil which mirrors her need to act out her emotions or to civilly suppress them).
Victor chronicles Setter's account of his dispatch of Sammy in Setter's Story #3, a tale which includes an interlude in France, where Setter had hoped to expose Sammy to some cultural pleasures, culinary, theatrical, and artistic. Not long after, Victor learns from Emily that Setter's walked away from it all, vanished, with no intention of ever returning. And not long after that revelation, Jennie announces that the scales have fallen from her eyes, that she again loves Victor as formerly. He wryly notes: "But I was glad for us both that Jenny meant what she had said, because if she went on believing she was in love with me it would be almost as good as if she really were so. ... Really good acting becomes a kind of truth."
It was Setter's "error of judgement" that he could not himself submit to the same sort of acting.
November 6, 2012
Hmm what do i think , not certain.
It is an interesting book no doubt about it, but and this may just be me , it seems older than say Trollope or Dickens or Wells in that it feels removed from my experiences more than some of their novels.
The writer is a good writer she has a way with prose and with syntax and she makes interesting moral and social statements but it felt uncomfortable, almost diffident yet forthright , which i realise is ridiculous as a statement.
I had to re read sections to ensure i grasped the point at times and so despite being a short novel it took a long time to read, i also am aware that the introduction and especially the choice of introducer put me off the book due to my own innate bigotry.
I can see why this is an important novel and could see why people liked it but i never really got to grips with it and my reaction upon finishing was thank goodness which is not the thoughts of a fan.
Maybe its a novel for the cleverer reader ?
It is an interesting book no doubt about it, but and this may just be me , it seems older than say Trollope or Dickens or Wells in that it feels removed from my experiences more than some of their novels.
The writer is a good writer she has a way with prose and with syntax and she makes interesting moral and social statements but it felt uncomfortable, almost diffident yet forthright , which i realise is ridiculous as a statement.
I had to re read sections to ensure i grasped the point at times and so despite being a short novel it took a long time to read, i also am aware that the introduction and especially the choice of introducer put me off the book due to my own innate bigotry.
I can see why this is an important novel and could see why people liked it but i never really got to grips with it and my reaction upon finishing was thank goodness which is not the thoughts of a fan.
Maybe its a novel for the cleverer reader ?
March 27, 2009
I like old lit. Reminds me a bit of Robertson Davies. Good, deep character study, a bit old fashioned, but it works for me.
July 29, 2015
Haunting.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews