@Kaetrin: I just replied to your post on my review. Thanks so much for the kind words!

I’m with Jayne, Maili & Aoife I’m afraid.

I needed a long time to finish BLACK SILK, even when I first read it. As Janine mentioned, it is not a book with a narrative drive running at full throttle. But I feel some books are like that. They are not meant to be rushed. They are like rich confections that you can enjoy a little at a time and it insults neither the book nor to the reader to proceed slowly and luxuriantly.

My feelings for BLACK SILK is one of deep admiration rather than outright adoration (the way I feel for Ivory’s BEAST, for example). And is it strange to say that had this book ended with Graham and Submit not together, my reading pleasure would not have diminished?

And Bettie, so good to see you surfacing!

@DS: I broke down and bought the ebook, even though I have both previous editions. I was surprised at the copyediting errors in it, but otherwise was glad to have the convenience of reading digital. Totally agree with you, though, that the digital price is ridiculous, especially when the book was originally released in MMPB.

@Barbara B.: I loved Hart’s Dirty, and think it was her best book by far. I haven’t felt the same depth in any of her subsequent books, but I definitely felt there was a gritty courage in the narration of Dirty that had a similar feeling to the provocative power of Black Silk.

@Alyson H.: That’s a great scene, especially in the way Graham picks it back up later in asking Submit to go upstairs and get the hat because he can’t stand her in the black dress. I love the scene where Graham pulls off all his rings and watches and asks Submit what he’s doing wrong in getting her to take him seriously. And when he then tells her about one of the twins. It was like a screw turning, the book changed to palpably for me at that point.

@Susan/DC: I agree that the cover is gorgeous, but I wish it were closer to the book. Submit, for example, has very long, very light, very thick blonde hair, and until the end of the novel she wears only black dresses. Here’s the original cover image (it’s the one on the right); I wish the new cover had been a classier update of that one, which at least had two of the more important details of Submit’s character right.

@Beverly: I totally agree that Ivory did a masterful job revealing the characters to us as she revealed them to each other. I loved the time frame of the novel, the patience Ivory seems to show with her story, and the way the pace intensifies once Graham and Submit are both staying at Netham. And while I don’t want to reveal too much about how Submit really starts to gain her confidence after Henry’s death, I think it was an absolute stroke of genius to have her take over one of Henry’s unfinished projects.

This is exactly the way I've always felt about Black Silk. For me, the very best romances engage me on both levels, the intellectual and the emotional, and essentially, that's where Black Silk fails for me. When I close the book I admire Ivory's skill, but am basically unmoved. It's all very clever, but at its core it lacks heart.

Well, the first time I read it, it did engage me on both levels, emotionally as well as intellectually. This time, it felt much more intellectual, and though I was moved by bits and pieces, I wasn’t as deeply moved by the whole as I wanted to be. I did feel that there was heart to it, even this time, but that that heart was buried under so many layers of other stuff.

@Jayne:

Beautiful prose that circles around endlessly is, in the end, just a maze of words that leaves me cold.

I had a line in my review that got at this but that I cut because of space, and because I couldn’t make it fit with any paragraph. I said that most everything was elliptical, and very little was direct. I would have liked more directness from this book. But since I didn’t feel that way at all the first time I read it, I still think it’s a book that is really worth trying.

The book may rely on Kierkegaard's leap of faith, but I think more of Forster's “only connect”. I can't connect with the characters and I have a hard time believing in their connection. Perhaps if I got farther into it . . .

I understand how you feel, because I experienced some of that this time around (though not the first time I read it). I think I was totally taken off guard by this experience because the first time I read it, it didn’t require much effort or patience from me. I did feel some connection this time, but it was in bits and pieces for me, present here and there, and then absent for stretches. I would have loved to have felt more than that. It was an interesting experience because usually my enjoyment level and my perception of a book’s merit match up, but this time they didn’t.

@msaggie:

It sounds like we had reverse reading experiences — whereas I like it somewhat less now, you like it more than you used to.

I also understand the gripes of people who did not like it. It does take time to get into, and it is very dense – slow-moving really. It has a hero who has a mistress, and who does not dump this mistress the moment he meets the heroine. There are lots of things that are no-no and hot button issues in this story. And the heroine was married to someone who could have been her grandfather when she was sixteen (that's just about the legal limit to have sex in the UK, and illegal in the US to have sex at that age in many states!)

I have to say that in my case, I don’t think the hero’s having a mistress or the heroine’s marriage to a much older man are factors in the fact that my enjoyment was more muted this time. For me, it was much more about it being slow-moving, and perhaps also about not showing as much of the characters’ vulnerabilities as much. I think one of the reasons Henry’s courtship of Submit caught my attention more than many other sections was because it showed how vulnerable Submit was at fifteen, that she would be so grateful to Henry for courting her. That made me care more about her character.

But the problem is, if Judith Ivory had tried to sell this novel today, it probably would have been rejected – it's too long, takes too long to get to the love-making bits (between hero and heroine, that is), isn't overtly funny enough – the list goes on.

I think you may be right about that, and that is too bad. Although if she were to write something like it today, she might be able to take it to one of the e-publishers.

I bought Black Silk years ago because it received such positive and gushing reviews. And when I tried to read it, its brilliance was lost on me and I DNF'd it.

Exactly my experience, except I bought it because it had been talked about positively on DA before, and I’d liked other Judith Ivory books.

But then I’ve found I also can’t stand My Lady’s Heart, although I like other Laura Kinsale.

@Aoife: You say it so much better. That’s why it was DNF. No heart, all brain.

The book felt like a complex, elaborate, beautifully wrought intellectual exercise. The blood-pumping heart of the story seemed to me, this time, to be buried under layers and layers of cerebral fat. I could see that Graham and Submit were perfect for one another, but I wanted to feel a deep, irreversible connection between them. I wanted my heart to beat faster at the thought of these two people connecting.

Yes.

This is exactly the way I’ve always felt about Black Silk. For me, the very best romances engage me on both levels, the intellectual and the emotional, and essentially, that’s where Black Silk fails for me. When I close the book I admire Ivory’s skill, but am basically unmoved. It’s all very clever, but at its core it lacks heart.

The cover of the rerelease is beautiful, and that, combined with Janet and Janine’s reviews, may provide the impetus to try again.

Wow Nicole. Thanks so much!

ETA: I think if our reviews were more than ordinary, it’s because the book is so extraordinary. I hope everyone gives it a shot.