SOURCE: Maristed, Kai. “Suddenly Last Summer.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (22 July 2001): 8.

In the following review, Maristed argues that The Looking Glass expresses an immediacy and intimacy unusual in historical novels and asserts that the book contains exciting narrative structure, rich imagery, and deep explorations of character.

[In The Looking Glass,] Genevieve, a foundling raised in provincial confinement by strict nuns, savored her first taste of freedom at 16. As she rode in a farmer's cart toward an arranged future as domestic maid, her “eyes seized on everything: the swaying rump of the horse just in front of me and the strip of leather harness confining its black tail, the crows flapping and cawing above the furrowed earth, the stinging green of hawthorn hedges, the shimmer of bluebells, like stretches of blue water, in the long grass beyond.” Dropped at a crossroads, she watched the “cartwheels tilting as they...