With a title like Palace of the Drowned, one might expect a relatively grim story, hopefully still a gripping one. This novel was not as grim as might be expected but not everyone found it gripping. The characters were quite vivid and some felt this was a story of women's friendships, with the inevitable positives and negatives of any life-long strong bond.
The character at the center of the story, an author with dwindling literary success and a very public and flamboyant failure, is an unreliable narrator from the start. Angry at her rich friend who has lent her a palace in Venice but has not arrived as promised, her gloomy outlook seems to match the descriptions of Venice in the winter. Cold, damp, deserted and resistant to newcomers, it seems one more rejection, until she meets a young woman who admires her and wants to be her friend.
Never mind that she doesn't want this friend and that she is also unreliable and intrusive. Needless to say, it doesn't end well for anyone. Sadly, the plot felt contrived, the characters actions unbelievable and the writing a bit overwrought, at least for some of us. Others felt it was interesting as it was hard to guess what might happen, and a lot did seem to happen. That is why we read and discuss, for differences of opinion. A good night, and a good discussion!
Many thanks to Kathy Baker for hosting in her beautiful home with gorgeous newly mown hay fields out the back windows and lovely art on all the ways. It was great!
And on we go. By popular demand, we are changing the July book away from Dickens but staying with a British classic writer. We are reading Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers, which is considered one of her best of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. I am reading it and am quite involved already, immersed in Oxford University in the 30's. Our date is July 18 and we will be at Margo's, thank you Margo!
See you all there!
