So from almost the beginning I was taken up and swept along with the characters. For another, it is told with a delicacy that allows space for the reader’s imagination to expand. For one thing, as a love story it is madly original in both method and substance. Here I am trying to write dispassionately, but I am in fact quite passionate about this book. It is also rooted in the literature of the day, and the characters have an intimacy with that literature that felt natural to the period but went far beyond what most modern writers attempt. The story is rooted in the events unfolding in Europe in the winter and spring of 1814, but they never overshadowed characters or plot. So often when the author of a historical novel has mastered period detail to the extent that Elizabeth Grant has here, there is a temptation to display details that can overwhelm the emotion of the story but the two existed in perfect balance for me. It’s rare that a novel engages my mind and my heart in equal measure, but this one did.
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