Art historian and novelist Novak (Alice's Neck
) links a modern-day professor and the 19th-century subject of her research in this slim, scholarly novel. Seeking tenure at a small Boston college, Angelica Bookbinder delves into the life of the great feminist intellectual Margaret Fuller, who was dubbed by Henry James "the Margaret-ghost" and who intimidated even Emerson. But instead of focusing on Fuller's scholarly achievements, the increasingly obsessed Angelica decides to write about Margaret's theories and practices of love, thus putting herself "on the verge of academic suicide." In order to understand Margaret's lesbian liaisons, Angelica attempts one herself with a female professor; to comprehend Margaret's strained relationship with a man, Angelica begins her own with a Melville scholar she meets in the library. Though they enjoy what Angelica prissily calls "physical rapport," he turns his attention from Angelica to a Baywatch
beauty. For the reader, the fictional Angelica takes a backseat to the more compelling factual Margaret. Novak's great fondness for and knowledge of her historical subject is palpable; perhaps a straight biography would have sufficed? Erudite and thorough in her research, Novak sometimes lacks comparable elegance in her prose (she has, for instance, a tiresome tendency to pose several questions in succession). And while she begins to explore the complexities of romance in the ethereal realm of academia, she doesn't delve deep enough. The obscurity of the subject and terseness of Novak's tone mean that few readers outside the target intellectual audience—say, those who will understand "Margaret had seen Anna as Recamier to her own de Staël"—may take notice. (Oct.)
