The Nothing That Everybody Knows

Volume One goes out on two scenes. A morning at Matcham first: Charlotte at a window with a flower, a stolen day in Gloucester, and James writing romance so openly you almost forget what it is you are watching. Garth Greenwell thinks the scene earns its sweetness, and he also thinks one word in it should scare you. Then Fanny Assingham stays up past midnight to reckon with the marriages she made, and hands her husband a strange watchword to end the volume on. Greenwell hears in it the real subject of the book's second half: what these people will manage not to know.