The Crack and the Ricordo

In Henry James's The Golden Bowl, a little shop in Bloomsbury, a bowl of gilded crystal going suspiciously cheap, and a shopkeeper who answers every question without quite answering it. Garth Greenwell loves this scene, and he means it technically: the question the shopkeeper will not settle is the question the whole novel runs on. Charlotte has asked the Prince for one hour before his wedding, and this is where the hour goes. Greenwell follows the haggling, the scripture and the Blake behind the bowl, the lie about the price, and a parting argument over a present, down to a single two letter prefix.