It's great to hear from you! How was Berlin? Any lurid stories or great adventures to pass on?
As you can imagine, the psycho-social dynamics here are getting stranger by the day. I'm in employment purgatory. How do you motivate when you know it's all ending? And how does one simply languish when they have any amount of pride in what they do? Oh well, I'll file it away as great raw material...for what, I don't yet know.
Ok, now to the project. First, an observation about my reaction to receiving your email this morning. I initially anticipated having.... I just had the STRANGEST thing happen to me. My left arm went numb...not numb like anesthetized numb, but like pins and needles numb. It felt gimpy and half alive, and my thumb started twitching. Then a bunch of adrenaline flowed through my body and I couldn't tell if I was having a panic attack or if something was really happening. But I looked at my thumb and it was jiggling and thought, "this is NOT psychosomatic, because my eyes are watching my thumb wiggle!!"
....back to my thought: Initially, I anticipated your email arousing my curiosity about the Greenhouse, but, because of your two-week absence, and a general fondness (and probable withdrawal) from our morning conversations It's hard to separate your voice from your account of the story. It's like having your mother read to you at night, you know? Your text is freighted with all kinds of personal associations I didn't expect...
Well, before I die, I should tell you about the story:
My section brings the aunt's character into higher relief. It also lays out more about the protagonist, who we learn hasn't seen aunt Lucy in thirteen years and that this aunt is her last surviving relative. We also learn the protagonist's name - or I assume we do in this section because you wouldn't have avoided mentioning that it was ROWAN MARTIN, as in Rowan Martin's Laugh-In, a show that was at the height of its popularity when this manuscript was written. I've looked over the pages four times to make sure it's true. If and when we meet the author, we need to ask her about that.
The nuzzler, Count Nick Reshevsky (yes, "Count"), makes eyes at Rowan, who we learn looks a lot like her aging aunt. Reshevsky, it seems, is a bit of a hound dog, and his flirtations are completely within his character. After some more flirting and strangely Victorian banter, Lucy admits to having one of the "best (the editor changed it from "most-well known") greenhouses on the Eastern Seabord." Aunt Lucy then makes some disparaging remarks about Rowan's father, an archaeologist, that insult Rowan.
After a chapter break, Rowan is escorted upstairs to her room by a Ms. Chow, where she meets the maid, Millie, and reflects a bit before the scheduled 7 'oclock dinner in the dining room.
The aunt has a bit of a sinister twinge to her, but I can't tell if it's going in that direction or not. Reshevsky sounds like a very one-dimensional Jane Austen-like gentleman with a randy side. Other than that, I can't tell how I quite grasp the tone of the novel.
This is the first book I've ever read without having the slightest clue about what genre it fits into. It really causes you to look at details more closely, doesn't it? I guess it'll have to be as I assume there are no Cliff's Notes for it.
Over and out,
Shane
Well, before I die, I should tell you about the story:
My section brings the aunt's character into higher relief. It also lays out more about the protagonist, who we learn hasn't seen aunt Lucy in thirteen years and that this aunt is her last surviving relative. We also learn the protagonist's name - or I assume we do in this section because you wouldn't have avoided mentioning that it was ROWAN MARTIN, as in Rowan Martin's Laugh-In, a show that was at the height of its popularity when this manuscript was written. I've looked over the pages four times to make sure it's true. If and when we meet the author, we need to ask her about that.
The nuzzler, Count Nick Reshevsky (yes, "Count"), makes eyes at Rowan, who we learn looks a lot like her aging aunt. Reshevsky, it seems, is a bit of a hound dog, and his flirtations are completely within his character. After some more flirting and strangely Victorian banter, Lucy admits to having one of the "best (the editor changed it from "most-well known") greenhouses on the Eastern Seabord." Aunt Lucy then makes some disparaging remarks about Rowan's father, an archaeologist, that insult Rowan.
After a chapter break, Rowan is escorted upstairs to her room by a Ms. Chow, where she meets the maid, Millie, and reflects a bit before the scheduled 7 'oclock dinner in the dining room.
The aunt has a bit of a sinister twinge to her, but I can't tell if it's going in that direction or not. Reshevsky sounds like a very one-dimensional Jane Austen-like gentleman with a randy side. Other than that, I can't tell how I quite grasp the tone of the novel.
This is the first book I've ever read without having the slightest clue about what genre it fits into. It really causes you to look at details more closely, doesn't it? I guess it'll have to be as I assume there are no Cliff's Notes for it.
Over and out,
Shane
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