The Precipice

Vera between three men on a Russian estate: Raisky the idle artist, Mark the nihilist, a grandfather's law. Goncharov's Precipice, unabridged in English, is a fall that is moral long before it is a cliff — society's script versus a woman's nerve, a slow house, love as a choice of worlds. Hear the household, not a plot racing. Exact as furniture, dangerous as a choice. Oblomov's author on a longer nerve: provincial Russia, three suitors, one precipice.