![]() ![]() I was reading another book simultaneously that was set in the second World War. I did not feel any emotional stirrings except in the trial portion and the shooting of the dog. ![]() ![]() They laughed at the wrong time, they teased and kidded when they might have reasonably been expected to cry or moan or writhe in pain. It was very much about my inability to connect to these characters. My reaction to this novel was more complex than that, however. According to Simonson, the Edwardians would have made the Victorians seem liberal and open-minded. ![]() I could not buy into North taking this form of revenge. Would a man like North have risked that? Why get Daniel discharged from service when he will be on the battlefield and subject to being killed? Isn’t that what North would have wanted? Even the despicable of the world might draw the line at murdering a boy in order to have revenge on a man. To expose Daniel as gay would bring doubt and injury to his own son’s reputation. Indeed, even the good-hearted people don’t seem to be able to pull it off. I would truly like to think that ordinary Englishmen of this period were not so duplicitous and hard-hearted. It was OK, but there was too much that was cliche, too much that was predictable, and too much that seemed to be to be stretching to address issues with modern sensibilities instead of 19th Century ones. I was excited and expecting to love it, I didn't. Once again, I find myself outside the majority on a book. ![]()
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