The Greatest Book Review Ever

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.[[1]]

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.[[2]]

The prose style is at once cerebral and deeply felt.[[3]] The reader doesn’t so much dread being in Eleanor’s predicament; we fear being Eleanor.[[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.[[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.[[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.[[7]]

Around 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.[[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.[[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.[[10]]

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.[[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.[[12]] At points, the story is mired in Victorian banalities, mainly those describing a large Hungarian man and his erotic adventures at an Insane Clown Posse concert.[[13]] Violent death follows leadership follows violent death follows leadership, and in this manner the bizarre Byzantine cycle continues.[[14]] Also, Miss Havisham just fucking hates men.[[15]] Queens never seemed ghastlier.[[16]]

More terrifying, however, than any of the supernatural threats is Eleanor’s all-too-recognizable mental fragility; while she’s clearly on the far end of the neurotic scale, her social estrangement and prying doubts mirror what many of us feel in mixed company.[[17]]

Is it wrong to revel in the characters’ delicious names—Frau Permaneder, Bendix Gruenlich—as if they were ripped from the pages of a postmodern comedy, instead of a fin-de-siècle realist novel?[[18]] Each character is so richly drawn (pun not intended), each so different from one another, one can’t help but fall in love with every one of them, likable or not.[[19]] The way Briony grows and matures, from a spindly-legged and bookish girl to a young woman to, at the end, a very old woman, makes it clear the author has studied the vagaries and vicissitudes of human development.[[20]] For the geneticist and young lovers alike, the characters’ lives intertwine and ultimately connect in a style akin to Bach’s Variations.[[21]] At age 18, though, the way the Revolutionary War played a part in their flirtation had me swooning.[[22]]

The real genius of the book lies in the final two pages, where a devastating plot twist unravels and lays bare the entire story for what it is: A wish that things had gone differently.[[23]] The one thing I learned: Never ever marry into a North German mercantile dynasty.[[24]]

[[1]]: Rosecrans Baldwin, The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

[[2]]: Nozlee Samadzadeh, The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope

[[3]]: Lauren Frey Daisley, Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers

[[4]]: Tobias Seamon, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

[[5]]: Bridget Fitzgerald, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

[[6]]: Michael Rottman, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

[[7]]: Liz Entman, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

[[8]]: Angela Chen, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

[[9]]: Giles Turnbull, Byzantium: The Early Centuries by John Julius Norwich

[[10]]: Erik Bryan, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

[[11]]: Michael Rottman, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

[[12]]: Angela Chen, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

[[13]]: Llewellyn Hinkes, Én Vagyok a Szexuális Paprika

[[14]]: Giles Turnbull, Byzantium: The Early Centuries by John Julius Norwich

[[15]]: Erik Bryan, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

[[16]]: Liz Entman, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

[[17]]: Tobias Seamon, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

[[18]]: Clay Risen, Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann

[[19]]: Bridget Fitzgerald, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

[[20]]: Kate Ortega, Atonement by Ian MacEwan

[[21]]: Lauren Frey Daisley, Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers

[[22]]: Nozlee Samadzadeh, The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope

[[23]]: Kate Ortega, Atonement by Ian MacEwan

[[24]]: Clay Risen, Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann