Review
Describing Lord Elgin as a jerk may not be the right way for American Patrick Browning to impress Anne Fitzgerald when he notices her admiring the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum. That there is a mutual attraction becomes plain as their separate research into the life of Mary Elgin makes their paths collide, often as they squabble over source books in the British Library. Both are scarred and vulnerable: Anne's comfortable childhood in the Far East was destroyed when her diplomat father was arrested and her brother disappeared, and she mourns a lover killed in a plane crash; Patrick's father was a philanderer and when he lived at home he felt smothered by his loving mother. As adults they find sexual pleasure with strangers or with married lovers whom they keep at a distance. Others are also interested in Mary Elgin, whose diaries Patrick has acquired from a dubious source. As he tries to decipher them he is attacked more than once and his flat ransacked. More than a scholarly rivalry is involved as threats and violence multiply. As Patrick and Anne try to work out what is happening to them, extracts from Mary Elgin's journal depict her own physical and emotional journey as she travels with her husband to Constantinople, where a series of events begins that will lead to disaster. She lives again through the research and reassessments made by Patrick and Anne as they, too, recognize how the broken bodies of the past can connect with an individual's present and future. Sally Emerson combines an exciting plot with a real subtlety and insight about the nature of love, and also gives us an intellectual puzzle that ends in a satisfactory and surprising way. (Kirkus UK)
A slow and rather tedious love story, and first US publication, from Emerson throws together two historians obsessed with the same woman and lets nature take its course. Historians Patrick Browning and Anne Fitzgerald are both wounded types, more or less permanently disappointed in their lovers and friends, and they become themselves by looking back across two centuries to find a world that is more congenial. They first meet at the British Museum, where they argue over the Elgin Marbles (Patrick thinks they belong in Greece) and take a mild dislike to each other. Although they don't know it until much later, they're both working on a biography of Mary Nisbet, Lord Elgin's wife, who was tried for adultery in a scandalous 1803 trial. As their separate manuscripts near completion, Patrick and Anne become aware of each other (through their publishers) as rivals-and Anne hears rumors that Patrick has secretly purchased a cache of Mary Nisbet's private journals from a shady antiquarian. A gang of thugs soon begins to terrorize Patrick on the streets at night, repeatedly roughing him up and ordering him to "go back to America." Garden-variety skinheads? Something more sinister? Then Patrick's flat is broken into and robbed-of nothing but the diaries. He confronts Elizabeth, accusing her of theft-only to find himself swept into her bed. They both have (married) lovers of their own, but they're unable to keep apart from each other-just as they find themselves locked in a cutthroat competition to publish the first exhaustive biography of Mary Nisbet. Why don't they just collaborate, you ask? Well, what kind of story would that make? A paperback romance tarted up with literary and aesthetic scenery that has no effect on its Harlequin prose ("Kate's flesh had been hot and solid and sweet, tasting of flowers") or cornball plot. (Kirkus Reviews)
Product Description
For 200 years, people have fought over the Elgin Marbles. Two young historians, Anne Fitzgerald and Patrick Browning, are seduced by Mary, Lord Elgin's hypnotic and adulterous wife. The discovery of her love letters and diaries leads them to revelations about the Elgins and a vital missing piece.
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