- Seems like a fascinating story from the start.
- It’s a pleasure reading a story set in contemporary, and slightly futuristic times, leavened by the connected secondary historical narrative.
- Beautifully written, often poetic.
- BUT: it’s not yet clear what meaning is intended by the ghostly intrusion into Leonora’s mind - ‘some inner tyrant’ (188).
- What purpose is this device serving? Page 120 and Jeff's just a sexually confused and exploitative bi from Melbourne. Dying for some reason and now pathetic. The lack of clarity is sort of getting annoying.
- The erotic dimension of the narrative seems an authorial obsession. It’s front and centre but for what purpose? One could be forgiven for concluding that the bi's role is just to spice up the narrative with a fair bit of gratuitous sex.
- What’s with the two Williams (the robot and the son of the manor lord) who are integral to the two stories? They are parallel 'helpers' to each character. Little meaning here.
- In the end, a surprisingly unresolved narrative. Very unsatisfying. Leonora is never able to overcome the societal barriers (lower class; female) to her progressing into a fulfilling professional career, nor marrying a man worthy of her. So we leave her back on the farm, alone. Her 'madness' is posited as the principal cause.
- The author was unable to move beyond the literalness of the ghost intrusion into a wider, substantial reflection which would give the book a depth and meaning.
- Meyer would have been better served focussing entirely on Leonora's story and fleshing it out more, Hannah Kent style.
(This rather shallow review heaps praise on the book from a feminist perspective. The contention that the 'reader is complicit' in the 'pillaging' is meta nonsense:
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/a-superior-spectre-by-angela-meyer-female-haunting/news-story/d9d7a00940a10998c06d65113e8221f2 )
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