Adele: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Good Start
Review: An excellent maiden effort. I was enthralled by how the author held the reins to the story. Her pace, sense of mood and atmosphere is magnificent. But towards the end, it seems difficult to make the present live up to the past. Looking at things from another angle, we might say the author is trying to convey a sense of how the past was just as twisted in its treatment of sexuality as today's society is.

Rating:
Summary: A strange novel with strange characters
Review: Skillful narrative, amazing events; hideousness and beauty; attention to sexual (and historical) details, gruesome and original plot. But there's a chilly lack of heart in this novel which all the brains and visual effects in the world can't fix. One of the characters, Blanche, says of her brother, "His eyes revealed more than the usual contempt common to his kind of Englishman (...) pure hatred." Flanagan's meticulous emotionless descriptions almost seem like a form of cruelty.On second thought, is that the point? Puzzling.

Rating:
Summary: A strange novel with strange characters
Review: The characters Blanche, her brother Jonas, and the unexplainable Adele are interesting, but the author never gives us much.

What exactly was Adele? And what caused her to be whatever it was, that she was?

What experiments DID Jonas perform? What did he learn about Adele? And what is the connection between Marcel and Adele?

Adele's story is a sad one, as is Blanche's.

The author never comveys any true compassionate for Adele or Blanche, although they are plainly badly treated.

There is no understanding on the author's part regarding Adele. The author seems to regard her as no more than a creature, a freak--as does Jonas.

Even Blanche and Adele's love is strange, twisted, voyueristic, actually more lust than love. Although eventually we do witness Blanche's devotion, which goes beyond lust.

Over all, however, the book is disappointing because it supplies no real answers; and the author's view seems like that of an objective scientist reporting what she sees through the microscope.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating concept; disappointing execution
Review: The mystery surrounding Adele's mesmerizing sexuality and the decadent secrets of 1930s Paris drew me to this book. Despite witnessing the passions and fears of the book's characters including one of two protagonists, Celia (museum-robbing, sleuthing magazine publisher), the reader never gets to know why these people act as they do. Adele should perhaps remain a mystery, but the fascination behind Celia's relentless search should have been explored. On the other hand, Blanche (Adele's captor/slave/lover) is as fully fleshed as Celia should have been.

Overall, I thought that for such sensual (often grotesquely so) material, the characters seem rather cold. It also seems to be missing a final chapter. Very unsatisfying (but was that the author's intent?).