Justine

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Contents: Alexandria quartet.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

One quarter submitted by larkspur on August 22, 2007, 7:11am _Justine_ is more satisfying than it initially seems when one considers that it is, and must have been explicitly written as, but one part of a multi-faceted tale. On its own, though, it is not quite a novel. _Justine_ is a meditation on the meaning of intimacy and identity, often but not entirely as expressed through sexuality. As such, it is rather disturbing, and one hopes not to agree with its conclusions.

The story must be pieced together from some jumping around in time and much in perspective. One character into whose mind (through his journals) the narrator "gets" is going mad for the central part of the book. The narrator himself has a number of significant acquaintances whose presence seems extraneous to the title character's story ... but then, some of them are the very characters who are titular to other quarters of the _Alexandria Quartet_.

I have to admit I didn't feel much of a sense of the CITY of Alexandria, despite the narrator's claims that all the characters were at times acting out their city's personality. Perhaps that sense, too, will develop with further volumes.