![]() ![]() Eventually, the Kellaways go home to Dorset, Astley joins the war in France and Maggie reveals a heart of gold.Ī story rich in background but lacking a compelling center. Chevalier echoes (and quotes from) Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, aspects of which are reflected in her characters, especially the various ruined or near-ruined women. ![]() Not much happens: John tries to seduce Maisie Maggie reveals a violent past a mob attacks the Blakes for their politics. The Blakes live nearby in Lambeth, and Jem becomes acquainted with the kindly radical poet and engraver who sometimes wears a red cap in support of the revolution taking place in France. Thomas Kellaway, a chairmaker, has been offered work by circus entrepreneur Philip Astley: The Kellaway’s son, Jem, assists his father with the carpentering, when not distracted by street-wise Maggie Butterfield pretty daughter Maisie yearns for Astley’s handsome, heartless son John. The Kellaway family has just arrived from rural Dorset after a death in the family. Rogues and bounders, larger-than-life benefactors and unworldly country folk populate a story that gives prominence to a fictional portrait of William Blake but devotes many of its pages to the broad social panorama-circuses and mustard factories, Bedlam and Bunhill Fields Burying Ground. Georgian London might itself be the biggest character in Chevalier’s latest (after The Lady and the Unicorn, 2004, etc.). A colorful historical novel considers the perils of life in 18th-century England. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |