A Quiet Adjustment: A Novel - Softcover

Markovits, Benjamin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393330222 ISBN 13: 9780393330229

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009

Synopsis

“A first-rate example of a literary historical novel.”―Regan Upshaw, San Francisco Chronicle

In his “Byron trilogy,” Benjamin Markovits lovingly reinvents the nineteenth-century novel, true to its perfect prose, penetrating insight, and simmering passions. Inspired by the actual biography of Lord Byron―the greatest literary figure and most notorious sex symbol of his age―Markovits re¬imagines 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 one’s obligations to society lead them all―and the reader―headlong to a devastating conclusion.

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: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0393330222
• ISBN 13: 9780393330229
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368