A Quiet Adjustment: A Novel - Hardcover

Markovits, Benjamin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393067009 ISBN 13: 9780393067002

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008

Synopsis

A psychological thriller of passionate attachment and emotional cruelty, involving a love triangle between Lord Byron, his half-sister, and his wife.

To dissolve a dreadfully mistaken union between two formidable egos: surely it should only take "a quiet adjustment"? Inspired by the actual biography of Lord Byron―the greatest literary figure and most notorious sex symbol of his age―Benjamin Markovits reimagines Byron's marriage to the capable, intellectual, and tormented Annabella and the scandal that broke open their lives and riveted the world around them: Byron's incestuous relationship with his impetuous half-sister, Gus. Their very different understandings of love and obligation lead them all―and the reader―headlong to a devastating conclusion.Acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic for his memorable prose and acute sense of character, Markovits here sets a new standard for the literary historical novel. A Quiet Adjustment is at once immersed in its period, an homage to Byron and his work, and a thoroughly modern fiction in the psychologically incisive vein of Ian McEwan and Colm Tóibín.

About this title

About the Author:

Benjamin Markovits grew up in Texas and London, where he now lives. He teaches at the University of London. He contributes to the New York Times, The Paris Review, Granta, the Times Literary Supplement, and others.

From Publishers Weekly:

When Lord Byron married Annabella Milbanke in 1815, neither anticipated the epic scandal that would ensue, one that novelist Markovits (Fathers and Daughters, etc.) captures beautifully in this elegant reconstruction, focused entirely on Annabella. Divided into three sections (Courtship, Marriage and Separation) the book opens as 19-year-old Annabella acknowledges her own desire for fame and power, or what her mother, Judy, calls scope. In the marriage section, Annabella's vision of Byron, whom she knew more through his poetry and his two-year epistolary pursuit of her than in person, shatters on living with the real personality—a compound of debts, moodiness and one big guilty secret. Markovits makes her discoveries suspenseful, and the secret's revelation gothic. The wrenching adjustment that follows in the marriage finds Annabella, ever observant, using Byron's secret to craft his ultimate punishment. Markovits's choice of an ornate Jamesian style captures every nuance of Annabella's shift from the victimized wife to the sinister deliberateness of the vengeful ex-spouse. As she remarks at the end about her husband, I feel like I have been reaching towards him all my life, without the warmth of his affection, the cold hand of love. Markovits plumbs the very depths of this passionate chill. (Sept.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0393067009
• ISBN 13: 9780393067002
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352