In the shadows everything and everyone is whirling and brash, it’s a slippery seedy world where nobody is what they seem and huge garish characters make impossible demands of each other. Robin first meets Nora at the circus and there was the feeling of circus throughout. In Paris, they’re all strangers and misfits, knotted together by Robin and her effect on them. At the centre of these characters is the doctor, Matthew-Mighty-grain-of-salt-Dante O’Connor. Baron Felix Volkbein is married to Robin Vote they divorce and Robin falls in love with Nora Flood who eventually loses her to Jenny Petherbridge. I found this a demanding and difficult read. But it wasn’t quite that neat, the atmosphere of the jazz age is here but I think Nightwood is set in its own world and not trapped by any particular time. Written in 1936 I wanted to read this as a counterpoint to This Side of Paradise, one from the beginning of the Jazz age and one from the end.
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