This novel is impressively written but has proven a hard slog to read. I've spent weeks on it whilst enjoying a dozen or so other books meanwhile. It is very intense and passionate in places, lyrical in others. But it is so very slow and crammed full of minutiae in extraordinarily observed detail.
The setting is the real star with the backdrop of the sea always present and the weather providing changes of light and atmosphere. The beach house becomes so familiar to return to after various trips around the local villages and to the Kaplans' house. It is the touchstone in this rather claustrophobic story. The staging becomes even more theatrical with the importance of letters to many of the characters bringing plot twists as well as news.
Hickey keeps you aware of the slight tension between summer visitors and more permanent people, the various somewhat one-sided relationships the orphan boy develops and the decades-long reliance between the painter and his wife. The differences in social class are overt in this post-war stratified society with many petty incidents and characters showing unashamed prejudice.
The setting is the real star with the backdrop of the sea always present and the weather providing changes of light and atmosphere. The beach house becomes so familiar to return to after various trips around the local villages and to the Kaplans' house. It is the touchstone in this rather claustrophobic story. The staging becomes even more theatrical with the importance of letters to many of the characters bringing plot twists as well as news.
Hickey keeps you aware of the slight tension between summer visitors and more permanent people, the various somewhat one-sided relationships the orphan boy develops and the decades-long reliance between the painter and his wife. The differences in social class are overt in this post-war stratified society with many petty incidents and characters showing unashamed prejudice.