One Last Look by Susanna Moore

After several wretched months at sea, Eleanor Oliphant arrives in Calcutta with her brother Henry and sister Harriet. It is 1836, and her beloved Henry has just been appointed England's new Governor-General for India. Eleanor is to be his official hostess. n nDespite the imported English gowns and formal soires, India makes a mockery of Eleanor's sensibilities. Burning heat, starving people, insects as big as eggs--it is all an unreal dream, rife with tumultuous life. Harriet gives herself over to the adventure. Henry busies himself with official duties. Eleanor, though groping for bearings, slowly finds her isolation punctuated by moments of elation: her first monsoon, graceful women in vibrant sarees, Benares rising out of the mist. She discovers she likes curries and her native servants; and often dislikes her compatriots. Over the course of six years and a trek from Calcutta to Kabul and back, India manages to unsettle all of her old, old ideas. n nEditorial Reviews n nIntriguing. . . . Moore . . . conjure[s] the heat and light and color of this hot, beautiful land, its smells and sensual allure. A compelling and richly textured story.-The New York Times n nMoore is a wonderful writer with a sensuous style. . . . [One Last Look] takes on the quality of a feverish dream. -The Baltimore Sun n nHow marvelous is a book that educates but does not preach. . . . [A] cautionary tale for smart women . . . and dumb men . . . but the beauty of the prose and the complexity of the narrative here far outweigh any edifying messages. -The Washington Post n nA beauitiful and powerful novel that records one woman's experience while illuminating a world of imperial folly and colonial rapacity and stupidity. -The Boston Globe n nVertinginous. . . .The sense of passing through a distant, phantasmagorical place with a curious and perceptive guide, is undeniable. -The Seattle Times n nIt is the secret world of women that Moore excels at painting, a world of unspoken truths and oblique connections. -Time Out New York n n[A] stranger, extoic, ungraspable place. . . . Moore is an extraordinarily gifted conjurer of weather, smells and sickness; riches, bliasters and bugs, her words steam directly off the page. -Chicago Tribune n nThe descriptive prose leaves one feeling the hot, dusty days and torrential monsoons....Moore's image of saffron-tinged India will have readers pulling out their Baedeker's and booking passage on the next ship sailing for foreign climes. -Library Journal n n[C]aptivating...fascinating...As Eleanor writes in her diary, ‘The writing of women is always read in the hope of discovering women's secrets'; Eleanor and her creator reveal just enough glimpses to keep readers transfixed. -Publishers Weekly n n[R]ich, lush...and wonderfully satisfying. -Kirkus Reviews n n[E]leanor is mesmerizing.... -Booklist n n[E]vocative... -Harper's Bazaar n nAn enormous accomplishment-vivid and precise, evocative and alluring, reflective of impressive scholarship. . . . Moore is an extraordinarily gifted conjurer of weather, smells and sickness; riches, blisters and bugs. Her words stream directly off the page.-The Chicago Tribune n nSplendid. . . . A rueful farewell to an age of conquest and colonization that-despite its period trappings-looks peculiarly like our own. A deeply moving story of empowerment and loss.-O, The Oprah Magazine n nLyrical. . . . [Filled with] lushly described landscape and coyly revealed Victorian sexual eccentricities.-Entertainment Weekly n nWhat Moore has done is to squeeze out of her peppery observations a nascent feminism and a covert sexuality. She heats Eden up. -The New York Times Book Review n nChilling. . . . [Moore] gives Eleanor a rich interior life and a mordant humor. -Vogue n n[Moore] excels at evoking time and place-the dresses and the narrative voice just so, the moans of the mango bird in the tree exquisitely described.-The New Yorker n nBreathtaking. . . . An engaging, luscious read. The characters are richly drawn . . . [and] rise effortlessly from the page. -The Oregonian n nThe accomplishment of One Last Look is a gradual unfolding of sensual detail that is truly transporting. -Los Angeles Times Book Review n nSensual steamy prose . . . masterfully evok[es] the likely sounds, smells and sights of early-19th-century life in colonial India. -Houston Chronicle n nIt is the secret world of women that Moore excels at painting, a world of unspoken truths and oblique connections. . . . It is a measure of Moore's skill that they never are [discovered]. -Time Out New York n- From the Publisher n nWhat Ms. Moore does so well in this book is what she did so well in her early novels set in Hawaii: she conjures the heat and light and color of this hot, beautiful land, its smells and sensual allure...Ms. Moore also chronicles with subtle emotional detail the effect that India-in both its exotic extravagance and its harrowing poverty-has on the narrator and her family...With One Last Look, Ms. Moore has worked a satisfying variation on many of her perennial themes and produced a compelling and richly textured story.-Michiko Kakutani n- The New York Times n nHow marvelous is a book that educates but does not preach! One Last Look is a cautionary tale for smart women...and dumb men...but the beauty of the prose and the complexity of the narrative here far outweigh any edifying messages.-Carolyn See n- The Washington Post n nThere is a certain kind of historical fiction which excels at evoking time and place-the dresses and the narrative voice just so, the moans of the mango bird in the tree exquisitely described-but, like this novel, Moore's fifth, fails to build into something larger. Henry Oliphant, the new British Governor-General of India, comes to Calcutta with his two sisters in 1836. They discover the country's emeralds, brocades, and phalanxes of servants, but are sheltered, at least for a time, from its grotesque poverty, and from political dynamics that will cause Henry's downfall. The narrative takes the form of a journal kept by the elder sister, and Moore has relied on contemporaneous accounts by British women in India both for factual details and for her prose style. The over-all effect, however accomplished, is so studied that it brings to mind the virtuoso performances that the narrator herself records: the snake charmer, or the monkey who climbs tall trees to pick tea leaves. n- The New Yorker n nMoore's captivating fifth novel takes the form of entries in the diary of Lady Eleanor, a British aristocrat who travels in 1836 to Calcutta with her sister Harriet and her brother Henry, who has been appointed Governor-general of the colony. Like the narrator in Moore's 1995 thriller In the Cut, eloquent but snobbish Eleanor is not especially likable-she's convinced of her own superiority, even over her own inordinately sensitive sister. But she's a fascinating heroine-not only because she teases readers with hints of her unusually close relationship with Henry. During her six years in India, Eleanor undergoes a striking transformation, realizing that her life-once a fastidious nibble-has turned into an endless disorderly feast. The Eleanor who likened Calcutta to hell becomes a woman able to admire her sister (who quickly falls in love with India), appreciate her exotic surroundings and recognize the folly of her stuffy fellow Englishmen and their attempts to recreate British culture on the subcontinent. She starts to question the idea of empire and to respect Indian culture; by the time Henry's tenure is up, she mourns the loss of her elation of toiling through isolation and wonder. In precise, elegant prose, Moore vividly evokes the country's beauty and overwhelming otherness, but her exploration of character is even more interesting. Moore spent two years studying England and India in that era, and her novel was inspired by the diaries of Emily Eden, an Englishwoman in Calcutta; as a result, her protagonist is nuanced and convincing. As Eleanor writes in her diary, The writing of women is always read in the hope of discovering women's secrets; Eleanor and her creator reveal just enough glimpses to keep readers transfixed. (Oct.) Forecast: This is another departure for Moore, who before In the Cut was associated with coming-of-age narratives anchored in her native Hawaii. Some readers may be thrown by her unpredictable trajectory, but others will appreciate her ability to apply her distinctive voice to different eras and genres. 75,000 first printing. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. n n- Publishers Weekly n nBased on the actual diaries of Emily Eden, a 19th-century Englishwoman known for her watercolors of the Indian people, Moore's novel gives us a glimpse into the journal entries of Lady Eleanor. It is 1836 Calcutta, and Eleanor has just moved from England with her sister, her cousin, and her brother, who has been appointed the new governor-general of the colony of India. Each member of the family adapts to life in India in a different way. The book successfully captures Eleanor's curiosity in-and occasional aversion to-her new surroundings. Each entry explores Eleanor's thoughts as she grows accustomed to a new way of life, that of the gentry amidst poverty. The descriptive prose leaves one feeling the hot, dusty days and torrential monsoons along with Eleanor; comparison to E.M. Forster's A Passage to India is obvious. Moore's image of saffron-tinged India will have readers pulling out their Baedeker's and booking passage on the next ship sailing for foreign climes. Recommended for most public libraries, especially those where travelogs have a following. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/03.]-Leann Isaac, Jameson Health Syst. Lib., New Castle, PA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. n n- Library Journal n nMoore's (In the Cut, 1995, etc.) fictionalized journal, based on actual published diaries, of life among the Raj in the 1830s and '40s depicts the convoluted relationship of the British to their Indian subjects. Lady Eleanor accompanies her brother Henry to Calcutta when he is appointed Governor-General to act as his official hostess (and secret incestuous lover). Also in the household are Eleanor's younger sister Harriet, their military-minded cousin Lafayette, and a slew of pets and domestic servants. At first, Eleanor, a sensualist at heart, is overcome by a kind of lassitude, a combination of the heat and the strangeness of the new life that throws her into contact not only with Indians but with middle-class Brits for the first time. In contrast, Harriet, always considered a bit dim in their high-born British world, blossoms into a strong, insightful, independent woman, immersing herself in native customs and setting up a laboratory to study the flora and fauna. Gradually, as Eleanor becomes deeply attached to her servants and their world, she begins to see the English role in India in a more complex light. When Henry, a conventional prig despite his sexual proclivities, doesn't follow Lafayette's advice about which local ruler to back in Afghanistan, he loses control of the region at the cost of thousands of lives. The scandal of Harriet's Indian male servant's gunshot death in her bedroom is covered up, but Harriet's unspoken intimacy with him is a far greater scandal, even in the eyes of Lafayette, who himself has fathered a half-caste child. When Henry's term is over (his disgrace over Afghanistan relieved by his new appointment to be First Lord of the Admiralty), Eleanor andHarriet, as dependent sisters, must return to England with their brother. Back on English soil, Harriet withers away while Eleanor (no longer enamored of Henry) survives with the help of her remaining Indian servant and opiates. When describing her life in India as an endless disorderly feast, Eleanor might well be describing One Last Look: rich, lush, scattered, repetitive, and wonderfully satisfying. First printing of 75,000 n n- Kirkus Reviews