Agent of Inquiry The Sleeping Partner By Madeleine E. Robins Plus One Press, San Francisco ISBN 978-0-9844362-5-5 $18.95 It’s harder to write a Regency novel than some might think, especially if your audience comprises modern female readers. If, on the one hand, a writer sticks religiously to the historic modes and mores of the time she’s writing about, she risks alienating the inheritors of two hundred years of feminist struggle. On the other hand, it is very difficult to insert “modern” sensibilities into a heroine from 1810 without making her an anachronism in her own story. Combine this with the…
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White Collars and Grey Morals NEXT By Michael Crichton. HarperCollins, 431 pp. $27.95 hardcover I have decided that Michael Crichton is an ironist. Only someone steeped in satire could write a novel like Next–a passionate defense of the humanity of man–and people it entirely with cardboard humans. In fact, the most engaging characters in Next aren’t even fully human–Davy the Half-Chimpanzee and Gerard the Half-Parrot have more life in them than any of the awkwardly posed figurines that pass for characters in this novel. I’m not even sure you can call this a novel. A novel usually involves a plot. With characters. I…