My Kindle Edition contained a short preface by P.D. James, where she describes the novel as “terrifying”. Personally I didn’t have that reaction. “Slightly creepy”, is probably as far as I would go in describing this. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading The Victorian Chaise-Longue. I had high hopes for this but I really dislike a book that ends with more questions than answers. I'm not that clever, people! Spell it out! This article has been written for us by an old friend of The Victorian Emporium, Claire Platten, who is a fabulous upholsterer based in East London. I actually don't say this too often, but I think this his book would've benefited from a more rigorous editing process. The second half was actually quite good, and there were ideas and moments in here with great potential, but in general I found the book largely disappointing and even cringeworthy at points.

This is the story of a young married, pregnant woman named Melanie in the 1950s with TB. She goes to sleep on a Victorian chaise longue and wakes up in 1864, an unmarried young woman named Millie who had incurable TB and a shameful secret. In her efforts to prove who she is, her identity becomes more and more linked to the past. Will she ever be able to return? Just who is she, really? Millie or Melanie? Is there a difference? Functional and Decorative: Antique chaises are not only functional for relaxation but also serve as decorative elements in a space. They can add a touch of luxury, character, and charm to a room, becoming a statement piece that enhances the overall ambiance.

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Récamier: a récamier has two raised ends, and nothing on the long sides. It is sometimes associated with French Empire (neo-classical) style. It is named after French society hostess Madame Récamier (1777–1849), who posed elegantly on a couch of this kind for a portrait, painted in 1800 by Jacques-Louis David. The shape of the récamier is similar to a traditional lit bateau (boat bed) but made for the drawing room, not the bedroom. there was only her body’s need to lie on the Victorian chaise-longue, that, and an overwhelming assurance, or was it a memory, of another body that painfully crushed hers into the berlin-wool.” Perhaps more interesting than satisfying, Marghanita Laski’s novella was written in the early 1950s. It opens in Laski’s present where Melanie, a new mother, is recovering from tuberculosis. She’s confined to her bedroom, looked after by her family doctor, husband Guy and household staff, so she’s overjoyed to be told she’s finally well enough to go downstairs, where she elects to rest on a piece of antique furniture, a Victorian chaise-longue. Once installed, she falls asleep but wakes up in 1864, still with TB but no longer married and no longer recognised as Melanie, she’s somehow switched places with Milly, a woman on the brink of death. The only constant is the chaise-longue. From the late 1920s and bleeding into the 1960s — a la Betty Draper’s era — chaise lounges fit the bill as a “form meets function” piece. Famous architects and designers fiddled with the chair’s design, keeping the chaise at the forefront of the prefabrication revolution.In the 1930s, the chaise longue moved from the psychoanalyst’s office to the silver screen. Any leading lady worth her salt — Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Gloria Swanson — draped herself seductively across one for photos and film shoots, generally clothed in a low-cut, spaghetti-strap satin nightgown. Today, it remains a staple of photo shoots for movie stars, fashion models, and even the occasional business executive looking to infuse femininity into her image. Is it a nightmare, time travel, madness or altered state, or (as she eventually wonders), some sort of test from Fate, Providence, or God?

The comparison merely came up because both authors seem to base their ideas on a similar question about what time really is, and how we live in time.

Méridienne:You’re probably most familiar with the méridienne style of chaise longue. a méridienne has a high head-rest, and a lower foot-rest, joined by a sloping piece. Whether or not they have anything at the foot end, méridiennes are asymmetrical day-beds. They were popular in the grand houses of France in the early 19th century. Its name is from its typical use: rest in the middle of the day, when the sun is near the meridian. For the purpose of this article, however, we will focus on the modern iterations of this piece of furniture.The chaise longue (pronounced “shayz long”, the literal English translation from French for which is “long chair”) has in recent decades become more popularly known and pronounced as chaise lounge in English-speaking countries. The modern chaise longue was first popularised during the 16th century in France. They were created by French furniture craftsmen for the rich to rest without the need to retire to the bedroom. It was during the Rococo period that the chaise longue became the symbol of social status and only the rarest and most expensive materials were used in their construction. Today, the chaise longue is seen as a luxury item for the modern home. They are often used to complement a home’s décor such as living or reading rooms, or as a stylish boudoir chair for bedroom seating.During the 1800s, the chaise longue developed more feminine connotations as a decadentthrone for women to rest during the day without having to go to their bedroom. It was during the French Rococo period that the chaise longue became a symbol of social status and were ornately crafted from only the rarest and most expensive of materials. Types of Chaise Lounges While I loved the book for its content and delivery, there were a few quibbles I had with the writing, which seemed to jump about a bit (But then, this may have been a way to show the MC's state of mind.) and with one element that left me puzzled - had the treatment of TB in the late 1940s/early 1950s really not moved on from the 1920s? English journalist, radio panelist, and novelist: she also wrote literary biography, plays, and short stories. Sounds mysterious? Well, it isn't. It's just that the plot is one thing if you read it with the expectation that everything in the book happens just as it is described. If, however, you begin to doubt the narrator, you may start to wonder what is really going on.

It could have been any conceivable period of time in which the thought that all these were strange took shape and words."As Melanie realises that she is trapped, effectively imprisoned in the body of a dying woman, she begins to doubt various ‘truths’ about her existence – more specifically, her identity, her sanity, and perhaps most troubling of all, her ability to return to the life she once knew. Much of the book is stream of consciousness as Melanie tries to make sense (or adjust) to what has happened, beginning with the obvious ‘is it a dream?’, to considerations of (if it isn’t a dream) how one might convince others that you are not who you appear to be. As the book progresses it become apparent that there are mysteries concerning the body/life our protagonist seems to be inhabiting, and the novel becomes increasingly claustrophobic as these are revealed. I felt that Laski captured the changing moods of Melanie very well as she navigated varying emotions of wonder, fear, frustration and empathy with her old and new self, whoever her ‘self’ might be. This is written in a style that epitomizes (to me at least) the beautiful precise, peculiarly ‘English’ prose of the 1950’s, which helps ground the book in its own time of writing, which I think adds to its sense of containment. Wow. What a weird novella. I read this for the first time on June 15, 2001. A GR friend had told me that another book of hers was excellent (To Bed with Grand Music) so I thought I would read this again, and then read the book recommended to me. Is 1950s Melanie some sort of reincarnation of Millie? This is perhaps a surprising theme for the author, who was apparently an avowed atheist. La letteratura gotica mi è sempre piaciuta ma purtroppo non avevo mai sentito parlare di Marghanita Laski; dopo aver letto questo racconto sono convinta di voler addentrarmi di più nelle parole e libri dell'autrice, perchè Sulla chaise-longue mi ha molto intrigata.

The mystery seems to be centred on a curious Victorian chaise-longue, with a stain in a place suggestive of sex or death (or both perhaps). Anyway, thank goodness she didn't buy the Jacobean cradle from the odd antique shop that she had never been in before. Gentrifiers - they were probably asking for it any how. The setting was very sparse. Most of the story takes place around the chaise-longue in two different time periods: the 1950’s and the Victorian Era in England. Like I said, the setting felt very claustrophobic and like a stage in a play. It was done well in all it’s simplicity though. I will not reveal anything else about the plot (and the above is pretty much revealed on all general descriptions of the book), other than that the plot takes on a different shape depending on how you approach it.

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However, I really enjoyed the conjectures that this question of whether "here" is "here" or whether "here" is really "there" allows. In fact, by the end of the book I could not help but draw parallels to one of my all-time favourite novels A Tale for the Time Being, only of course that Marghanita Laski published The Victorian Chaise-longue in 1953, 60 years before Ozeki's book. Do I think that Ozeki borrowed from Laski? Absolutely not.