Kat Dancing

Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell

Agnes Shanklin has always lived her life for others: her overbearing mother, her beautiful sister, the children she teaches in her small Cleveland school. Then, in 1919, the influenza robs her of mother, sister, and job all in one stroke. Cut adrift, Agnes decides to take a cruise to Egypt with her dog Rosie. There she will be a witness to the Cairo Conference that changed the face of the Middle East and a friend to some of the most famous and infuential people of the time; she will meet a man who changes her spinster life forever; she will begin, at forty, to discover who she is.

In Dreamers Russell has taken on the ambitious project of telling a small story -- that of Agnes -- against the backdrop of giant ones. She does this largely by making the giants equally small; World War I, the influenza epidemic, the Cairo Conference, all are explained mostly as they affect the tiny and diffident figure of Agnes. The giant personalities that threaten to overshadow her -- Winston Churchill, Gertrude Bell, Lawrence of Arabia -- are likewise rendered in miniature: not Churchill's leadership, but his love of painting; not Lawrence's deeds but his nervous giggle. Greatness lurks behind in the shadows, coloring the edges of events and words, but is never allowed to take centre stage. The result is a book of heartbreaking poignancy and beauty.

There are flaws. Agnes, particularly in some early passages, shares with Dickens's Esther Summerson an unfortunate tendency to be too good while at the same time characterizing herself as a bad person, giving her an air of unbelievable martyrdom. And I found the final passage of the book less than satisfying. These flaws, however, speak less to the quality of the work than the immense challenge Russell takes on in portraying a small woman among greatness -- a balancing act that I have never before seen performed with such finesse and power. A brief glimpse of an oft-overlooked period of history, this is a book I will be chewing over for a long time to come.