Katherine Mosby is a poet who just wrote her first novel. Perhaps not surprisingly, "Private Altars" is a poetic story.
Not only is the plot poetic - set in the South and filled with nobility and love and death - but the language is lush. Too lush, in fact.Mosby writes beautifully. And the plot is so grand, so tragic that it had me sobbing before the end. But it takes awhile, too long I think, for the book to capture the reader. The main problem seems to be the dialogue. Every paragraph of it is eloquent. I felt as though I were being drowned in cream, it was so smooth.
Eventually, before I was half through the story, I got used to the dialogue. I got used to the fact that every character spoke lyrically - from Vienna, the educated Northern woman who is the book's main character, to the small town librarian, to the small town mayor, to the precocious children.
Mosby's sense of humor helps keep the novel from being completely cloying and the story itself is great drama, high tragedy. All in all, "Private Altars" is worth reading and I look forward to Mosby's next book with the prayer that it will be not quite so pretty.