Christopher Hart
The Caribbean Queen
The Empress of the Last Days
By Jane Stevenson
Jonathan Cape 358pp £16.99
SOME NOVELS ARE spoiled by the author's doing too much research. Jane Stevenson's latest is spoiled by the characters' doing too much research. They are forever poring over obscure tomes in the British Library, or popping into the Bodleian ('the Bod') to check up on some obscure historico-scholarly reference. Although the reader may be just as much of a bibliophile as the author, this tendency in the characters hardly moves the plot forward with any great urgency, except in the hands of a master of the form such as Umberto Eco. Instead, The Empress of the Last Days (like A S Byatt's Possession, an evident progenitor) totters forwards like a determined but overburdened bluestocking carrying a hundredweight of venerable leather-bound books on her back.
This is a shame, because Stevenson's cool, erudite and seductive writing generally commands such admiration, not least the previous instalments of the historical trilogy that this new novel concludes, the brilliant Astraea and The Pretender. The Empress of the Last Days takes place in the present. And this time-shift reveals
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
When @djbduncan notices the text for a literary jigsaw puzzle had been written by a former colleague, his head spins. A wild surmise. Are jigsaws REF-able?
Dennis Duncan - The W Factor
Dennis Duncan: The W Factor
literaryreview.co.uk
In an effort to scold drinkers, Victorian temperance societies furiously marked every drinking establishment with a red X on city maps. It was a spectacular case of propaganda backfiring.
@foxtosser explores the history of drink maps
Edward Brooke-Hitching - From Beer Street to Gin Lane
Edward Brooke-Hitching: From Beer Street to Gin Lane - Drink Maps in Victorian Britain by Kris Butler
literaryreview.co.uk
How did a workers’ insurance agent who died of tuberculosis at the age of forty become a global literary icon?
@MortenHoiJensen on Kafka's metamorphosis
Morten Høi Jensen - Paranoid Humanoid
Morten Høi Jensen: Paranoid Humanoid - Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka by Karolina Watroba; Kafka: Making o...
literaryreview.co.uk