Emily Dickinson Is Dead

Emily Dickinson Is Dead by Jane Langton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"The guests at the Emily Dickinson Memorial symposium are all passionately devoted to the poet. Professor Peter Wiggins is eager to revitalize her image (and his own career) by exposing a very controversial photograph. Winifred Gaw, an obese graduate student, feels compelled to make public the special bond she shares with Emily Dickinson -- the awful pain of unrequited love. And even Professor Tom Perry's new girlfriend, pretty Alison Groves, finds that her indifference to poetry undergoes a subtle change when she's selected to wear Dickinson's famous white dress.

Soon academic and romantic rivalries begin to intrude on the cultured atmosphere, and the ardent tributes to Dickinson's memory are rudely interrupted by arson, forgery...and murder."
~~from the back cover

The book began with promise. The language was witty and polished, and the plot thickened nicely. Soon however, the machinations slid from merely eccentric characters and fairly outre but still believable actions and motivations over the edge of reason to outlandish and improbable, with a soupcon of deus ex machina thrown in for further suspension of credibility.

I hate when that happens!