(originally posted on July 20, 2009)
In a departure, I spent three months, off and on, reading this book, which more than lived up to all the hype that preceded it in the seven intervening years since its publication. The language is plain-spoken and ribald, Rackham is genuinely dazzled and bamboozled by the turn his life is taking, his wife Agnes is all too believable as someone in the grip of forces beyond her mental control, and then there is Sugar, ready to seize her destiny but still not quite equipped to handle what comes next. Watch your step indeed, but that hesitation before the plunge is totally, utterly worth it.
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