In a way, Honor is the perfect observer, noticing the sense of impermanence of America's early settlements, the noisiness of the insects, the extreme fluctuations of the seasons and the focused, no-nonsense approach of the settlers – which she gradually comes to recognise as an admirable quality of self-sufficiency: "They do not practise the art of conversation in quite the way the English do," Honor notes in a letter to her parents, "but are straightforward to the point of bluntness. (In a Philadelphia Quaker Meeting, to her great surprise and dismay, Honor is taken aback by the blatant racism within the Friends' community.)Ĭhevalier always writes to terrific visual effect, incorporating her extensive research seamlessly into her novels, and this one's no different, whether she's conjuring a colourful milliner's shop in frontier America, a social quilting circle, a creaking, slow, horse-drawn wagon ride deep in the Ohio woods, or the sensuousness of a cornfield on a blazingly hot summer's day. Tracy Chevalier has woven a rich tapestry here, setting her protagonist at the crossroads of a time explosive with issues surrounding slavery, rapidly changing industry, America's pioneering spirit and its racial divide.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |