![]() ![]() The sheer queerness of it all is exhilarating. What’s more, Danforth writes potent women. And she knows that piling it on past the breaking point is a formal innovation all its own. She’s gifted at braiding characterization, suspenseful plotting and frequent injections of flat-out terror. In less dexterous hands, this sort of high-camp homage - which pops up perennially from novelists as varied as Susanna Clarke, Marisha Pessl and Reif Larsen - could fail spectacularly. Her narrator winks at us from the footnotes. There is no literary embellishment in which Danforth won’t indulge. It’s also - to use a word rarely employed in high praise - fun. There are direct asides to the dear reader, George Eliot-esque epigraphs and even ink sketches of bustle-skirted ladies in distress. It’s 600 pages you can read in a weekend, a supersized Slurpee that will satiate you and leave behind a sugar high. ![]() Plain Bad Heroines, a queer historical meta-novel by Emily Danforth with at least a dozen layers of formal flourish, is joyfully and delightfully middlebrow I say this with reverence in my tone and adoration in my heart. there are times when a reader wants nothing more, and nothing less, than an exquisitely plotted, winkingly crafted romp. ![]()
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