Donoghue's writing is deft, her characters fleshed out, her subject impeccably researched and presented with crisp detail. This is an immensely readable book- all the more so knowing that its lurid and tragic story is based on fact. It's facile marketing to draw comparisons between this divorce case of Victorian England and the late 1990's Clintonian/blue Gap dress/cigar debacle- as the publishers try to; this series of affairs stands in a scandal class of its own. It's also an excellent portrait of life in the middling classes at a time when western women were finding their own voices.

I rate it highly -not because it covers any new literary ground or displays extraordinary writing- but because I was as entertained as I hoped/expected to be.