From: LouisFors@aol.com
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Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 10:53:38 EST
To: emweb@fmgmt.mgmt.utoronto.ca
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Subject: Re: I Never Came to You in White
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In response to my search for opinions about I Never Came to You in White,
Martha Nell Smith wrote:

>beware the characterization of susan dickinson in this novel.  esp. since
>susan nursed emily during emily's final illness, the coldhearted deadbed
>depiction is inaccurate, and saddening.

I've just read the last half of the novel again, and I see your point.  Susan
Dickinson gets a clobbering.  Thanks for calling my attention to that.  Farr
doesn't write with much humor there, as she does, for example, in the invented
correspondence between Higginson and the fictional Margaret Mann.  (The humor
isn't in the text of the letters, but it takes only a little knowledge of
Higginson to see the comedy rising in the climax to their exchanges.)   I
imagine the risks in writing a novel about ED, or any artist, are great.
Nevertheless I've just ordered _Rubicon_.

Louis Forsdale

P.S.  Marianne, I'm too old to blush (if that is possible), but you brightened
my morning here in sunny Santa Fe.