A belated Victorian triple-decker, this bloated beast and baggy monster feels like an abortion of modernism. Poor Somerset, he only managed to question the validity of the values of the triple deckers: the emphasis on passion, the marriage status as the desired end, the faith in Woman as a kind of moral bank you can draw from whenever you’re in need of a confidence boost and motivation to get back into the rat-race of capitalism. Innocence, treachery, lack of judgment, all come together to call into question the values of the last hundred years of fiction, but they can’t manage to find a new way to say it or find a new set of values.