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So far nothing extraordinary. A moderate let-down from its predecessor Cecilia. The plot is not catching, the characterisation shaky and stale. Hope it will pick up soon enough.

DNF.

Exasperating characters can be agreeable to me, but there are so many things I hate about this book. Ill-chosen narrator, unlikely plots, misplaced pathos, irrational but specious actions, indifferent romance, and a glaring fault of trading significant events in character building for recurring ravings and vaporings which being unnecessary puts one quite out of patience. Shelved. Life too short.

This book keeps getting better and better!

One last volume to go. I don't want this book to end!

DNF at 30%.

A meditation on grief that sinks in vaporing, prosing, and speechifying (see what I did here?); numerous contradictions in trying to be deep but forgetting what was asserted one chapter ago; pretentious, unnatural, and hollow-Li successfully doubled the volume by studying not the art but the appearance of transforming the irretrievable into the irremovable.

This story has an aura of its own and is teasingly consistent, which resembles painting in a frame in that the choices are blissfully limited by the set space.

I can see some paralleles and echoes reflected in Austen's novels. A tell-tale disease. A walk in the rain that leads to it. And so much more. I should learn to take notes hereafter but it is not possible when you wish to finish reading this masterpiece at one sitting!