Samatha Ellis
Entertaining Eliot
Sophie and the Sibyl: A Victorian Romance
By Patricia Duncker
Bloomsbury 292pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
‘The lady is old. The lady is ugly. The lady has wonderful eyes.’ So Max, junior partner in his brother’s publishing house in Berlin, sums up George Eliot on the first page of this exuberant novel. Eliot is liver-spotted, wrinkled (it is 1872 and she is racing to finish Middlemarch), smells of cinnamon and alcohol, and has a long thin face, a massive jaw and vast eyes. Max shares a surname with Patricia Duncker; the seed of this novel was a reference Duncker found to Eliot’s German publishers, which sparked the question, ‘If someone who bore my name had been so closely connected to the writer I loved, why should I not take his place?’
Max is a shiftless hero and a bit of a waster who approaches a literary salon with the resolution to ‘do a bunk as rapidly as decently possible. Don’t, don’t, don’t get drawn into political discussions or religious debates. Avoid bluestockings.’ Duncker has a lot of fun with Max getting
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘He has become a kind of global guru, public intellectual and consultant to the great. He is the ultimate geopolitical gerontocrat.’
From July 2022: Piers Brendon on Henry Kissinger.
Piers Brendon - Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her
Piers Brendon: Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her - Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger
literaryreview.co.uk
‘Even setting to one side the historically neuralgic relationship with ... Ireland, Britain’s insular periphery has from at least the time of the Romans presented difficulties for authorities wishing to centralise.’
Peter Marshall on Britain's islands.
Peter Marshall - Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago
Peter Marshall: Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago - The Britannias: An Island Quest by Alice Albinia
literaryreview.co.uk
Offer ends soon! Take advantage of our best ever Black Friday offer and get a year's subscription for £29.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/blackfriday/