New Grub Street by George Gissing: Day 29
Chapter 29
“Their eyes met and the look of each seemed to fascinate the other.”
This superb line appears in the middle of a life-changing conversation between Alfred Yule and Marian. Gissing doesn’t linger too much on the sentence level, but when he does, there is a chill and a thrill.
Victor Duke’s story, in the middle of a chapter called “Catastrophe,” is still shocking. A whole new novel behind that brief encounter.
Nothing makes Alfred Yule more hateful when he reads the letter, learns of the lost money, gives the letter to his wife to share with Marian, listens to her fainting, and then says to his wife:
“Attend to her. I suppose you know better than I do what to do when a person faints.”
A very striking sequence of events.
Join us on December 13 for a virtual discussion of New Grub Street with Yiyun Li.
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They say life turns on a dime. Three life-changing events here in one chapter—Alfred’s eyesight problem, Victor Duke’s train crash, the loss of Marian’s fortune. It’s the story of how characters deal with calamity that will be of interest in the rest of the book.
"Their eyes met, and the look of each seemed to fascinate the other." Like Yiyun Li, this is the very line that struck me. A chill and a thrill is exactly right in describing the feeling it evokes.
Alfred Yule's kindness to Victor Duke. I have seen that this phenomenon among humans of one being kind to strangers and cruel to loved ones is not as unusual as one might think.