Good marks for Gothics

By Eugenia Thornton

Edward, Edward by Lolah Burford (Macmillan; $8.95) is altogether more ambitious: it is sexier, covers far more geographical territory (Devon, London, Vienna, Brighton), concentrates far more on men than on women, to the degree that you find yourself enmeshed in an affair which is not only incestuous but homosexual. (What will they think of next in Gothic?) The hero, James Noel Holland, Earl of Tyne, is a triumph of baroque Byronic characterization and Burford is so beguiling a writer that she almost makes you believe in his companion and illegitimate son. Edward .. but not, alas, entirely.

The reason is simply

that the book is too long. The story is a spellbinder but the author is so entranced by the period early 19th century and by the foibles and fashions and fears of her younger protagonist that this reader, at least, bogged down in detail.

All the same, as an evocation of an era it is excellent, even if over-burdened.