Volume 51, Number 13 · August 12, 2004
Comic, Sad and Indefinite
By Hermione Lee
Alone! Alone! Lives of Some Outsider Women
by Rosemary Dinnage
New York Review Books, 296 pp., $24.95
You might expect the presiding genius for a collection of essays about exceptional women to be someone like Joan of Arc, or Cleopatra, or Hillary Clinton. But for Rosemary Dinnage it's Miss Havisham, that frightening cross between revengeful spinster, broken-hearted victim, and manipulative patroness, forever locked in time and waiting to be consumed by the fire of her own implacable resentment, half witch and half bag lady. Not an attractive or heroic presence to find shadowing Dinnage's choice of 'outsider women,' but a fitting ghost to haunt these somewhat melancholy proceedings. 'If it's about misery, send it to Dinnage,' she imagines her literary editors saying.
Review, 2304 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |