The Daguerreotype

Patrick Gregory. Syracuse University Press, $24.95 (244pp) ISBN 978-0-8156-0825-7

Elizabeth Gow's dream of being a self-sufficient schoolmistress is dashed when her biologist father moves them from London to the Pennsylvania wilds to lecture at the new state university in The Daguerreotype, Patrick Gregory's debut novel. As the disappointments and compromises of adulthood erode her youthful hopes, Elizabeth stoically reconciles herself to life's uncertain course. Although Gregory ably renders his heroine's Victorian sensibilities, the novel plods sluggishly through Elizabeth's coming of age, then speeds through her middle years to her death. .

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