Eline Vere (1889) by Louis Couperus

The consumptive look was very hot in 19th century.

Book Review
Eline Vere (1889)
by Louis Couperus

Replaces:  Torrents of Spring by Ivan Turgenev

  Louis Couperus was a Dutch novelist in the 19th and early 20th century- incredibly prolific- who had a huge hit with his first big- Eline Vere- about a sad, rich,  young woman living in The Hague in the late 19th century.  Vere is the kind of girl who draws comparisons to Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary- the characters; and Couperus is compared to Tolstoy and Flaubert in the essay that accompanies the current edition of the English language translation.   I guess that is what a publisher would say, though the  Afterword by Paul Binding compares Vere to the Silver Fork novels- popular in the UK between 1820 and 1845- none of which have "made it."  Today, the only place a reader is likely to encounter that genre is in an introduction to Vanity Fair (1845), where the genre is commonly cited as influence on Thackeray's book.

    If you can read Eline Vere and give a fuck about Vere and her problems, you are a more attentive reader than I.   Rather, I drifted through it, perking up when she starts taking morphine for her consumptive cough-  I LOVE THE CONSUMPTIVE LOOK on women.  Little blood on the handkerchief.   530 pages- this book.  Worth noting.