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Published by McNally Editions
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
On a Victorian pleasure cruise, a chance encounter opens the floodgates to regret, desire, and possibility in this “little period gem of feeling and clarity” (The Guardian).
It is 1851, only three years since Europe was convulsed by workers’ revolutions, but already English tourists are returning to the Continent, taking the waters at Baden Baden, then traveling by paddle steamer down the Rhine valley, celebrated for its romantic vistas. Among the sightseers are the pious Reverend Charles Morrison, his wife and daughter, and his maiden sister, Charlotte, a seemingly meek middle-aged woman who’s spent her life attending to the needs of others.
Like the river upon which they’re traveling, however, Charlotte contains hidden depths. A chance encounter with a fellow passenger in Coblenz sparks a Damascene moment, unleashing in her a sudden and violent awakening of memory, fear, and sexual desire. As the travelers are swept onward to Cologne, Charlotte wrestles with what Lauren Groff in her foreword to this new edition describes as “a subtle and total derangement of understanding,” eventually surging toward a moment of crisis.
Rhine Journey is “a patient and cunning representation of the intimacies of a repressed and wasted life” (London Review of Books) by a novelist “incapable of writing a bad or inelegant sentence” (Hudson Review).
It is 1851, only three years since Europe was convulsed by workers’ revolutions, but already English tourists are returning to the Continent, taking the waters at Baden Baden, then traveling by paddle steamer down the Rhine valley, celebrated for its romantic vistas. Among the sightseers are the pious Reverend Charles Morrison, his wife and daughter, and his maiden sister, Charlotte, a seemingly meek middle-aged woman who’s spent her life attending to the needs of others.
Like the river upon which they’re traveling, however, Charlotte contains hidden depths. A chance encounter with a fellow passenger in Coblenz sparks a Damascene moment, unleashing in her a sudden and violent awakening of memory, fear, and sexual desire. As the travelers are swept onward to Cologne, Charlotte wrestles with what Lauren Groff in her foreword to this new edition describes as “a subtle and total derangement of understanding,” eventually surging toward a moment of crisis.
Rhine Journey is “a patient and cunning representation of the intimacies of a repressed and wasted life” (London Review of Books) by a novelist “incapable of writing a bad or inelegant sentence” (Hudson Review).
Product Details
- Publisher: McNally Editions (July 16, 2024)
- Length: 208 pages
- ISBN13: 9781961341098
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Raves and Reviews
“Ann Schlee’s wider vision is adventurous and sunlit . . . She writes historical novels that are more advanced, more interested in feminism, for instance, than her contemporaries who write of the twentieth century.”
– Jane Gardam, Slightly Foxed
“In its empathic evocation of period, in its understanding of people enchained by piety and caste, in the bite and luminosity of its style, [Rhine Journey] is entirely mature, and a finished work of art.”
– New Yorker
“The writing in Rhine Journey is always taut and wonderful . . . graceful, economical, and emotionally acute, but, to me, the most astonishing aspect of this novel is the precision with which Schlee replicates the customs, language, and atmosphere of 1851, hewing so closely to the feeling that a book written in the early Victorian era stirs in the reader that, upon learning that Rhine Journey was only first published in 1980, I did a double take.”
– Lauren Groff, from the Foreword
“A little period gem of feeling and clarity . . . caught in the crystal of spare sensitive writing and carrying complete authenticity.”
– Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian
“Marvellous . . . Ann Schlee has created a haunting, and fastidiously delicate and yet plainly tough story which escapes any accusation of being a pastiche Victorian piece, though its sense of time, place and tone is perfect.”
– Anthony Thwaite, The Observer
“Ann Schlee possesses a remarkable gift for enabling the reader to enter a past world, enlightened but unshackled by modern concepts and prejudices.”
– Isabel Raphael, The Times
“Ann Schlee’s prose flows mellifluous and limpid as the Rhine itself.”
– Kirsty McLeod, Country Life
“The sense of period is beautifully sustained, and we are never allowed to step outside it . . . A distinguished piece of work.”
– Graham Hough, London Review of Books
“A fragile, decorously-paced novella about a middle-aged Englishwoman's sudden twist for independence from her repressive relations—the surprising by-product of a tourist Rhine journey of the 1850s . . . Charlotte's fantasies, given body and voice by this mystery man's presence, throb with heartache and latent fury . . . An appealing little tale, with immaculate period ambience.”
– Kirkus, Starred Review
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