So, I think the pace is quite an important element of the story: perhaps it is the main theme of the story itself. My new book, Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace, tells the story of an English Madame Bovary, a dissatisfied, well-to-do wife called Isabella Robinson who became infatuated with a series of young men. And the same thing when the soldier - her first lover - abandons her: The slow pace - her life, in essence, her ennui (reflected in the story of Emma Bovary)- changes when she meets him: secret meetings, the gossip of the town, the suspense of her clandestine rendez-vous - these are in direct contrast to that pace and when he leaves her out of his sense of feeling trapped by her expectations - this broke my heart the first time I read it and even this time, while re-reading, I was again very sad - I felt such pity - and this, too, contrasted with the slow pace of the prose style, and I suddenly wanted to read the entire novel that very night, to know more of what her mind was going through, her thoughts, her sense of desperation. Its pace is slow in the beginning, but the revelations - the drama - is worth waiting for, and it kind of makes the slow pace of the beginning of the book work: for example, Emma's relationship to her child: when we see how cold she is towards the child, and the way this - I would call it indifference - is revealed: it is (at least to me) shocking - and that slow pace adds to this shock. Judith wrote: "I know it's a classic, but I'm not seeing why"
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