encomia to industrialists and contempt for the canaille were less in demand
she quite often looked towards him in a peremptory way
though this might make them sound virtuous but stolid, like dutiful commentaries on a certain kind of stereo-typically English reserve. In fact, despite their pace, they are not stolid
Add to this the novel’s several set-piece historical divagations, a motley anthology of attempts to reach alternate dimensions or point outside the confines of ordinary human understanding
It is hard to be happy when one’s husband is a mirage, a peripatetic legerdemain of a man, a deception of all five senses.
