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Apart from Proust’s, this is the best novel of its era I’ve read. Better than Joyce, better than Conrad, better than James. The reason why it’s been neglected is because it’s partly a love story and partly because it exploits the old Jamesian Old-World-New-World trope (corrupt vs virtuous) which must’ve been an annoyance for Europeans of Ford’s era in a way that we cannot understand today. It’s also not experimental. Coming into being at a time when other writers were trying different ways of representing reality, this is, in the upshot, a relative shortcoming but Ford’s wonderful novel deserves two thumbs up from this decrepit-but-still-functional reviewer.
My antique visage echoed by my reading choices. I’ve been gallivanting around the countryside with my collection of books for the past decade and now I’m sampling old volumes kept without being read – some of them – for thirty years. Time now for a bit of appreciation.
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