This is a weird little book. The prose style is unusual, but worked for me most of the time. About midway through I really found myself grooving on the book's wavelength when all the threads of the biographers, the Melvilles, and the narrator and her husband were being deftly wound together. But ultimately the lack of narrative structure made me feel like this was more a writing exercise than something with a broader point. It probably doesn't help that my level of interest in Melville and Hawthorne is so low as to almost be negative. I have little patience for the worship of the erratic, temperamental, and usually misogynist male genius, and this book didn't do much to convince me that I should spend any more time with Melville than necessary. I really wanted more exploration of the narrator's relationship with her husband. I get how it fits into the text, but the fleeting glimpses we get of their family life made me want to dig into that more.