Starred review from May 15, 2004
Canadian author and designer Hodgson has made the "illustrated" novel her specialty--obviously drawing on her interest and expertise in design. As in her previous novels falling into this "genre," the actual format is significant. Her works have a scrapbook nature to them, with the texts augmented by photographs, clippings, drawings, maps, floor plans, receipts, and pressed flowers, all on heavy, high-quality paper. This time Hodgson has invented a mysterious, mesmerizing tale about a young British man who, in 1914, ventures on a latter-day version of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Grand Tour and finds the Middle East so fascinating that he is compelled, almost at the expense of free will, to buy a certain house in Damascus, Syria. The novel's conceit is that in the "present" day--which is 1945--this man, of course now much older, is forced to prove his ownership rights of the house that has come to be not only his shelter and sanctuary but also his lifeblood. His way of documenting ownership is to set down, in notebooks, details of his long association with the house he loves above all things. The sheer physical beauty of Hodgson's novel--so delicious is it to simply study the abundant and authentic illustrations--is buoyed by the beautifully sculpted prose. Grounded in real place and time and even architectural detail, the novel nevertheless soars as a dreamy, even ghostly, evocation of lost worlds and people--as an exquisite excursion back into history, borne on the author's keen imagination and creativity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)