This was quite a fat book, and I read it in a day, so it was definitely engaging. But it was clearly more interested in making a Discourse about the state of England-America relationships, and specifically transatlantic marriages between impoverished English aristocrats and wealthy American heiresses, than it was in telling a story with sophisticated plot or characterisation. Yet, in a way, perhaps because it was so interested in doing the Discourse, it also avoided certain plot elemens that might otherwise have been much too predictable and tiresome. For example, one component of the book involves a romance between (who else?) an impoverished Englihs aristogract and a wealthy American heiress.