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Title: second time around
Review: On rereading "Clara Reeve" after many years, I was sorely disappointed. In fact I was unable to finish it. The contrivance of a semi-Victorian semi-Gothic novel did not enthrall me this time around. Villainous fortune hunters, sexual ambiguity, people falling or jumping into Vesuvius don't cut it any more. Similar patterns in James' "Portrait of a Lady" stand the test of time very well. As I grow older and return to reread books from my youth, I often find myself wondering why I found the book in question so captivating. Of course sometimes I'm overwhelmed again (e,g., "Till We Have Faces" and "Shadowlands" by C.S. Lewis and "The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel" by Nikos Kazantzakis,"On the Nature of Things" by Lucretius and even "The Sword in the Stone".)There are too many books and too little time to spend any of it on books which fail at their task.
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