I was enthralled, first to last ... What may be most wondrous about Isola is its seamlessness. All its elements — style, tone, setting, characters, historical accuracy — render a richly real world, graphic and palpable, from aristocratic estate life to most-wretched human suffering.
Elegance ... I occasionally wished for a more visceral register ... But Goodman is as resourceful as her heroine in developing Marguerite’s interior life; she conjures sublime expressions of nature that sustain Marguerite even when her faith abandons her.
