glowauroraa

It's basically a character-driven book. Most of the action goes on within the characters' hearts. There's very little dialogue. And the few dialogues that there are sounded most unnatural to me, and that not just because of use of classical pronouns like 'thee' and 'thou.' The book presents interesting psychological studies of characters buried under a sense of guilt. But the sensibilities of the characters and their feelings and conflicts are far removed from the present day feelings and sympathies. So it is a bit hard to relate to them, more so because we hardly hear them speak. And the character of the child, and her words, sounded most unnatural of all.
The writer no doubt possess a great mastery over words. But his presence is too obvious all through the book. And he is too descriptive. I found myself flipping through several pages to reach the story.
The first chapter where the narrator describes how he came across the story is totally avoidable. It presents long characters sketches of people whom we never meet in the story.
Overall, the book has more literary value, I guess, than entertaining.