I saw a copy of this sitting on a table in a bookshop in Dublin a couple of years ago and picked up and read it for a while. I would have liked to have loved it

I saw a copy of this sitting on a table in a bookshop in Dublin a couple of years ago and picked up and read it for a while. I would have liked to have loved it and maybe as a teenager I still would have been able to invest it with the a little bit of the real magic it seemed to lack for all its technical accomplishment...but I guess I've exchanged those powers for something else - or just lost them. The thing that still amazes me is how words themselves - without any other props - can still engender the kind of mystery and sense of romance which they were aiming for. Even when we're used to entertainments with far more sensory power.