[close] Sometimes, a book comes along that demands attention, so considerable is its achievement. Peter Rushforth's Pinkerton's Sister has all the earmarks of being such a book, with the twenty-five years it took to write resulting in a novel that his publishers (for once) are fully justified in calling a `tour de force'. This is a sprawling, ambitious, richly detailed piece of work that recalls Joyce's Ulysses in its panoramic picture of a whole society, presented through a series of sharply observed mini-portraits (although Rushforth is more immediately accessible than his great predecessor).

Set in turn-of-the-century New York, Rushforth's subject is the Pinkerton family, still yoked in pre-Twentieth Century ways. Alice Pinkerton is treated with care and indulgence by her family as she is 'special'; somewhere on the fringes (as her family perceives it) of sanity, and taken out to social events but always nervously observed. Alice has her own world, constructed out of the books she loves --and this literary conceit is the engine of Rushforth's remarkable book. Alice has enriched her mind with the gothic menace of Jane Eyre and the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, the wit of Oscar Wilde, the glorious poetry of Shakespeare, the insights of Walt Whitman. With laser-like penetration, she cast a cool eye on the follies of the world around her, her observations honed by the great work of literature that are her inspiration.

Over two decades ago Peter Rushforth published his first book, the much-acclaimed Kindergarten, and that small masterpiece has lacked a companion for many years. The wait was well worthwhile: Pinkerton's Sister may be an arm-straining volume at 729 pages, but amply rewards the patient reader's close attention. --Barry Forshaw [close]