Thanks Rowan, I was wondering what had happened.

Yup, I enjoyed the insight into the Marx/Orwell POV as well. I sure do get a lot out of reading with you folks.

Yes, she most definitely enjoyed the wedding night. I recall a passage in which it was suggested that there was other sex but that it was never again satisfying to her but I can't find it right now. And hey, she frequented glory holes, right? Sorry…

Most Victorian marriages didn't end in murder (duh) so it might've been illuminating for Bainbridge to give us a little more insight into a more typical example.

A sad, but fascinating marriage
I found my sympathies shifting over the course of the book. I began by disliking Watson and feeling for Anne, but somewhere along the way those loyalties were swapped. Obviously there is plenty of blame to place on both for their utter failure of a marriage, along with the society in…

I've never done this before but…

Bold style choices
The more I think on it, I realize the overall style was what I liked most about this short, but affecting book. I generally dislike epistolary format so my heart sank a bit when it started out that way. Yet towards the end of the main body of the book (when Anne questions John about something in one…

I've been married for 28 years now - no comment on the subject line…

Alternatively one might suggest that Whitehead couldn't decide what the book was intended to be and so he just threw it all in there in the hopes that something would work…

One of the few things I really liked about the book was the descriptions of "Lift" magazine. Read any publication that caters to a narrow hobby or profession and you'd think the entire world revolves around it…

I think there's less agreement than one might think. I, for one, hated Destroy, She Said and was lukewarm at best on Wrestler's. I adored Cloud Atlas and Little, Big. And thought To The White Sea was the best book I'd never heard of.

"Highly predictable" doesn't come close to describing my reaction to Natchez. I'm typically *terrible* at seeing plot twists coming, but his story was telegraphed from the outset. Sheesh.

I'm with you MikeStrange. I did finish the book but I never got past the notion that while Whitehead had a pretty interesting germ of an idea he failed to execute it beyond a college fiction level. I never cared for or about Lila Mae and that, to me, is a fatal flaw. I found it rather clunky behind the often florid…

I'm in. Glad to have this run of shorter books too.

Once upon a time
I'm solidly with Zack in that I never considered the ending to represent some kind of break with reality. The book, from it's first sentence, is a fable and that by its nature allows for fluid boundaries with respect to 'reality'.

Interesting. It's a bit of a stretch but this is all making me think about Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote".

The charm of the 'almost'
I thought that the setting in time and place was one of the things that truly elevated the book beyond what it otherwise might have been. As someone who grew up in the NY suburbs it really evoked the familiar yet by being set in my great-grandparents' day it still retained an other-worldness.

Wow. Very insightful analysis.

Nice catch Miller. That adds an interesting dimension to the relationship between Martin and the Vernons.

Maybe we're just arguing semantics here. I wouldn't characterize Martin as ambitious. He seemed uninterested in money, power, or fame, which are the things I tend to associate with ambition. As you said, he (and we) remain unsure of his true motivations. The one thing we know is that everything had to get bigger,…