Adverting

I have papers to grade and an abstract to write, both of which are interfering with the blogging at present, but I have been making my way through 'Verts.  One of Davies' many (many, many...) targets in this novel turns out to be the sensation-cum-social problem novel, of the sort Charles Reade and (late) Wilkie Collins tended to commit write.  We have a mysterious will! And a bait-and-switch involving what looks like (but isn't) illicit sex! And a murder! And commitment to an insane asylum under false pretences! (I haven't even made it to the third volume yet.)  As the ever-metafictional Davies points out to us, of course, he's dispatching all of these events at rapid-fire pace, with little-to-no suspense involved; every sensational event simply gets popped.