Dreaming Iris by John de Falbe
Love, whether originally mental or glandular, a coup de foudre or a gradual smouldering incandescence, fulfilled or not, constitutes the basis for most readable fiction. In Dreaming Iris, John de Falbe, abiding by this tradition, examines the effects of imaginary love on two real but fragile relationships. He has written a subtly engrossing novel about characters who in actuality might provoke good shakings. This is a story of privileged family life in which the only stable foundation is a dilapidated country estate in Leicestershire. How different from love in a ‘romcom’! The admirable higher literacy of de Falbe’s prose invests adulterous yearnings with something like gravitas. His characters seem really to care about their mundane obligations in spite of the lure of the cloudy realms of the romantic ideal.
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