Imposture
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"[Markovits] leaves us wanting, in the most delicious way, more." —Kirsty Gunn, The Observer
Lord Byron was the greatest writer and the most notorious, scandalous lover of his age—an irresistible attraction for a sheltered, bookish, and passionate young woman like Eliza Esmond. Eliza believes she’s met Byron on the doorstep of his publisher, and that her dreams have come true when he arranges to meet her in secret. But what if the man she believes to be Byron is someone else—a look-alike named John Polidori, who once toured Europe as Byron’s doctor?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Markovits's latest (after 2005's Fathers and Daughters) is a masterful chronicle of a doomed 19th-century romance that begins in deception and ends in tragedy. Bookish Eliza Esmond, having forever lived in the shadow of her prettier sister, has a chance encounter with famed writer and legendary lover Lord Byron outside a London bookstore and is thrilled when their brief conversation turns, over time, into his pursuit of her. Unfortunately for Eliza, her Byron isn't the real Byron; he's John "Polly" Polidori, a bumbling doctor with literary aspirations who had worked as Lord Byron's personal physician. Even after Byron severed their relationship, Polly remained obsessed with the poet and went to absurd lengths offering up his sister, for one to keep Byron in his life. Polly maintains the charade, and his anonymously published and wildly popular story is believed by everyone including Eliza to be Byron's work. Markovitz is a remarkably economic writer who neatly conveys his characters' inner whirlwinds: "It was, for Polidori, a little like discovering, after an orphaned childhood, that your father had been a king, that you were a king, now, too." A powerful climax underscores the misery and longing at the core of this impressive novel.
