A Quiet Adjustment (Byron Trilogy 2) [Paperback]

It's easy to forget that this is a modern novel. It has a kind of timeless quality that really brings the story of Byron's wife (Annabella Milbanke) to life in a readable and contemporary way - while still being totally appropriate to the period.

Markovits has an unusual writing style - it has a kind of period style with a more modern intellectual twist, which I suppose is probably intentional given the subject matter. It's quite compelling and his books, including this one, are beautifully written. Even if I do sometimes get slightly tired of his 'habit' (ha ha, I couldn't resist demonstrating it) of putting random words in single quotation marks!

All in all, a very compelling story about Byron's wife - and, more importantly, about love, family, friendship, marriage and love triangles and a bit of madness thrown in for good measure. Annabella is a beautifully drawn character - intelligent and prone to self-reflection, yet also easy to sympathise with because her quirks and flaws make her endearingly human. The whole plot plays out against a background of celebrity, social intrigue and politicking, as Annabella's marriage falters as she comes to terms with an unusual, incestuous love triangle and tries to make the best of a difficult situation - with mixed results and no small measure of heartbreak.

Like the first book in the trilogy, Imposture, this novel also has some interesting comments to make about fame and celebrity culture - I'd bet good money that this book will be as fascinating for avid Heat gossip column readers as it is for literary-minded Byron enthusiasts!

Firstly this is an intelligent novel written in mostly beautifully-formed sentences, but I'm afraid that for me it reads as an exercise in writing not as a novel with drama and characters which draw you in. The blurb says it is a novel written 'with enormous passion' but I would say the exact opposite: it is a novel which actually represses all passion and drama for something far drier and more objective that completely failed to draw this reader in at all.

I don't know whether this was a deliberate decision on the part of the author given the usual flamboyany mythologising about Byron, but if so it failed utterly for me. What we were left with is a dry, repressed and almost scientific series of events told from the viewpoint of Annabella Milbanke, the ill-fated wife of Byron who suffered her marriage to be destroyed (if it were ever started?) by Byron's semi-incestuous affair with his half-sister Augusta.

There is no atmosphere in this novel, no coming to life of any of the characters, not even Caroline Lamb (of 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' fame). It's like watching a play through a thick pane of glass: we can see and hear what people say but it's all distorted and distanced, completely separated from us so that we cannot empathise, sympathise or even connect.

The author also has an incredibly irritating habit of putting words in quotation marks for no particular reason ("he had been 'imported' by Lady Caroline 'for the season'. Herr W spotted in Annabella 'an ally' " p.8) which given there was nothing else to hold my interest, became a bigger and bigger problem.

I adore Byron, both his poetry and his letters, and was really looking forward to this book, but was very, very disappointed.

Although much has been written about the so-called infamous libertine Lord Byron, less is known of his long suffering wife Anne Isabella Milbank (1792-1860), better known as Annabella. Daughter to Sir Ralph Milbanke and his wife Lady Judith Milbanke, Annabella was very aware of propriety, yet her youth was defined by a diffidence and naivety that caused her to be heavily swayed by the attentions of the devilish Lord Byron. Often described as cold and prim, Annabella seems an unlikely match for this man who would become her ultimate obsession. Even as Annabella first sees Byron at a summer waltzing party at her aunt's Melbourne House and hosted by Lady Caroline Lamb, (whose affair with Lord Byron had begun to be talked about), Annabella is intrigued by his dark and foreboding presence and the image of him dancing with his half-sister Augusta, a pretty woman "though thought to be as shy as a wren."

The talk of London society, the dramatically dark and "morally fractured" Lord Byron's popularity has soared following the success of his poem Childe Harold. A man of giant appetites, who keeps an air of indifference to propriety, he becomes obsessed with Annabella, courting her almost to the point of exhaustion. But it is through the machinations and a cozy intervention from Lady Caroline Lamb which is not outside the scope of Lady Melbourne's own design that a pattern of larger orchestration is eventually established. The impressionable nineteen-year-old Annabella who doesn't want to be thought of as a prude is only too willing to step into the wifely shoes even as she probably realizes subconsciously that she will have to put aside and subjugate her own needs to promote the interests of the great poet.

Through dinner parties and drawing room talk, particularly that of the gossipy Lady Gosford, the conversation always seems to turn to Byon's moral character - or lack thereof: He`s nothing but a miserable libertine, whose various immoralities serve only the cause of his unhappiness." But with the prospects opening before Annabella of love and beauty, and enhanced by all of Byron's wealth, the fame and genius could accomplish, she becomes determined to cast any aspersions about him aside. Annabella sets out a game for him to play, determined to beat him and show him that she can just as well act the misanthrope as he. In the end, Byron challenges his muse to dare to look deep into herself, while also setting out to charm her parents. It isn't long, however, before each word or touch begins to produce a slight imbalance. Their relationship lacks love and without it they could only keep their course by little adjustments. The failure perhaps is his, although she had offered to break off the engagement.

Divided into three parts: courtship, marriage and the eventual separation, Benjamin Markowitz's portrait of the famous poet is always kept at a distance, his abuses, menaces, his furies, neglects, and infidelities are always filtered through Annabella's eyes. It is a fascinating story. Surprisingly it is Augusta whom Annabella is eventually drawn to, entering into an intimate correspondence. Even when Byron relives his anxiety by tossing soda-bottles against the ceiling - a pastime he tended to engage him whenever he sensed the two women conspiring and excluding him - Annabella and Augusta form an embattled intimacy, two sisters having an ample sense of "confederate thrill."

Certainly the marriage by a girl like Annabella to a man with such a formidable reputation was scandalous for the period. The author paints a fascinating picture of a young woman who is forced to travel outside her sphere of influence, that she had been accustomed to thinking as the world itself. To escape this world had been in many ways the object of her marriage. It is her parents, the unassuming Ralph and the drunken Judy, and also by association Augusta, whose relationship with her brother was rumored to be somehow inappropriately intimate, who further inflames the marital situation, eventually leading Annabella into another direction, forcing her to tear aside the hypocritical veil, but at least helping her survive the death of her hopes of a happy marriage. Throughout the novel, Annabella's awakenings as a women, and as a wife scorned, are contrasted with the pain of her shattered marriage. Although her new-found friendship with Augusta offers some solace, she's mostly left to pine away as a widow, thankful that she would never have to live though such years again. Mike Leonard September 2008.