This is beautiful edition: gracefully printed and with charming line illustrations from Marsh.
Rereading the novel for the first time in years, I was startled by the ruthless cool; twelve children by six different men, poverty, rape, incest, exile, and throughout, an almost hypnotic sangfroid, even as Moll says all the expected things about sin and suffering and Hell. I remember as a younger man finding the distance between the tone and the events off-putting, now I think it what makes the book so satisfying for the modern reader; Moll as Brechtian narrator, feminist ironist, or whatever critical construct you like. For me, the experience was, this time, just beer and skittles, and most interestingly, quite moving.
Bless Moll and the memory of good Daniel Defoe!
Rereading the novel for the first time in years, I was startled by the ruthless cool; twelve children by six different men, poverty, rape, incest, exile, and throughout, an almost hypnotic sangfroid, even as Moll says all the expected things about sin and suffering and Hell. I remember as a younger man finding the distance between the tone and the events off-putting, now I think it what makes the book so satisfying for the modern reader; Moll as Brechtian narrator, feminist ironist, or whatever critical construct you like. For me, the experience was, this time, just beer and skittles, and most interestingly, quite moving.
Bless Moll and the memory of good Daniel Defoe!
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