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Originally Posted by Victoria
Ditto. So all credit to A.B. that despite that lack of mystery, we enjoyed it and were engaged enough to keep reading and want to see events unfold.
However all the excellent critiques of the book’s structure, the author’s foretelling, etc, have me wondering about Charlotte’s reluctance to have the book republished after Anne’s death. I’ve read it was due to the subject matter, but maybe she was also concerned about the quality of the writing.
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I think that is spot on
Victoria. She knew it was a potboiler and thought it better to have it disappear quietly. The trouble was that apparently it was still available in the US.
It’s odd, isn’t it, that AB couldn’t see the value of a slow reveal by an omniscient third person narrator. Apart from anything else, the minute reporting of long conversations in both the letters and the journal were a bit hard to swallow.
Really, this is another of those rare books that are much better on film than on the page.