Roland Michell, a scholar on the famous
Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash, accidentally comes across unfinished missives
written by Ash to a woman not his wife. As the tenor of the letters reveal an affectionate regard Ash may have had towards the recipient, Michell embarks on a quest, bringing with him the letters and a burning question: who was the woman? He investigates and the trail leads him to another
Victorian poet modern-day feminists admire, Christabel
Lamotte, and Lamotte scholar, Dr. Maud Bailey. Together, Michell and Bailey unearth more letters between the poets and a love affair that is bolstered by journals from LaMotte's lesbian lover and Ash's wife. But what started as an academic quest soon leads into a chase as rival scholars join in to uncover the mystery behind the Ash-LaMotte affair that could shed new light into the works of the eminent poets. What emerges is an extraordinary discovery....
I am not much into poetry but I appreciated the depth and mystery of the poems that this novel
brought. While they may come in as fillers, the poems still prove to be good reads if only to decipher the metaphors and similes, or to exercise one's literary skills. I will not, however, kid myself and the readers into saying that, while I have read every verse of the poems, I understood or appreciated each one of them. I read the poems just for the heck of it. But the novel...now that is a different story. I loved the enigma surrounding the fictional Victorian poets and the affair that beautifully unfolds, without haste, but with all the drama of a mysterious love affair. I admired the parallelism of the story between the poets and the scholars, none of which outdid the other. And I was touched by the final chapter of the novel, which was altogether poignant and sweet.