Richard, I can’t thank you enough for coming back and sharing your thoughts about the book. I wish we could get more of this going on. It’s such fun to hear what others think about these books.

You raise an interesting point about whether the jumps in time are necessary. I liked seeing the young Karel up against the older Karel and wondering about how he got that way. I think it added to the narrative drive. Another thing this type of structure does is point to the “continuous life”–that the kid we were, the teen-ager we were…we are all the same person. Which goes along with what you were saying about “the working out of what is and what was.” And I agree: a series of smaller resolutions is much more realistic than one big climax. And again yes, wonderful–it explores its gothic circumstances “within the lost world that gave rise to them.”

Thank you, Cynthia, for calling our attention to this book.

Richard, it is. Let me know how you like it.

Maybe they would mean more in context–I was trying not to give away the story. Those verbs in the second example in particular really explode in meaning where they appear in the book.

Sounds like you are enjoying your Kindle!