This months Literary Review has arrived and contains a glowing piece by Diana Athill on Jane Smiley's book 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. I haven't seen this in the bookshops here yet and hope that surely can't still be as a result of the early problem? I wasn't to know that the untrimmed page edges were intentional. It was obviously a concept thing to make the book resemble Jane Smiley's central text, the year 1004's (yes 1004) bestseller edition of Lady Murusaki's The Tale of Genji. Having returned two *faulty* copies to the Great River of Books and complained about a third they decided to withdraw the entire stock as sub standard and I think the book was unavailable in the UK for some time as a result. I can only apologise profusely and I do hope you all now have your copy.
I kept one of the substandard ones rather than be parted again from a book I had bonded with lovingly and of course, as is my wont, marginalia-ised wildly.
And a huge thankyou for the tip off from bookaholics anon. over in the US, prowling the aisles of Barnes & Noble on our behalf, who shared news of this must-have gem within hours of publication last October, if only you'd mentioned the pages.
Faced with a complete loss of confidence in her writing, despite consistently good reviews, Jane Smiley chose to take a break and read books instead. Thankfully the result was this book that, once discovered , becomes one that you love to have resting at your right hand. Diane Athill agrees with the rest of us that this is a book to be reckoned with and she makes the point that it will appeal to both those who read for pleasure and those who read for something a bit deeper. I frequently dip in to check if my current read is amongst Jane Smiley's 100 novels and see if our thoughts match up.
It joins the sacred pile of its own that is 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.
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