Word: victorians
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...product of 19th century British fiction. No fooling. Charles Palliser does not resuscitate this old form -- which stretched from Jane Austen to Thomas Hardy -- in order to play modernistically with its conventions, as John Fowles did in The French Lieutenant's Woman. Never does Palliser's Victorian mask slip to reveal the ex post facto knowledge and anxieties of the present era. Pastiche is not a means to an end but the whole point of this enterprise...
...takes a brave or foolhardy author to court competition with the 19th century masters, to write an ersatz novel when dozens and dozens of the real things are on the library shelves. That Palliser succeeds in capturing this distant world of Victorian fiction -- with its careful plotting and moral punctiliousness -- is impressive enough for openers. That he makes The Quincunx a gripping read throughout most of its length is practically miraculous...
...situation seems a direct conflation of Great Expectations and Bleak House: he has the hope that his fortunes may improve and the knowledge that, if he survives, he may spend the rest of his days in fruitless litigation. But his adventures call to mind a host of other Victorian novels as well. He is sent briefly to a Yorkshire school and enters the harsh world of Nicholas Nickleby; he overhears a former governess tell her life story, and the events and diction take on the coloration of Jane Eyre...
Still, patient readers will find their investment of time worthwhile. The book's leisurely pace contributes to the overall effect of uncanny impersonation. Victorian novels were not brisk because people had plenty of time to spend with them. Now it is difficult to go home after work, put some wood in the fireplace, light candles or gas lamps, and settle in for a long, peaceful evening. The Quincunx suggests how much fun that could...
...later. Church was an inventive showman. Heart of the Andes, more than 5 ft. by 9 ft., went on view in a trompe l'oeil architectural frame built, literally, like a picture window, so that one sat down on a bench and had the illusion of gazing from a Victorian living room into sublimity, complete with palms, parrots and Andean campesinos adoring a cross. If his other paintings prefigured CinemaScope, this one was the ancestor of the big-screen home...