<p>A few observations:</p>
<p>There are a few hints here and there that the book is being “written” by Agnes after her death. The very opening line: “I suppose I ought to warn you at the outset that my present circumstances are puzzling, even to me.” Another, fairly early in the first chapter: "My brief obituary would be written by a bored young newspaper man in 1957: ‘Agnes Shanklin, heiress, dead at 76, after a long illness.’ " Then, after she has rescued Rosie from the Nile, a stronger clue: “Ever since that morning, alive and dead, I have gone over and over those few weeks in Egypt.” I think that the first two are ambiguous, on first reading. The opening line could have meant anything. The reference to the obituary did seem slightly weird to me, when I first read it, but the “would” could be taken as merely prospective, in the imagination. The “alive and dead, I have gone . . .” is pretty clear-cut, but it’s also quite near the end of the book–not sure whether there is a clear indication any earlier.</p>
<p>Toward the beginning, Russell mentioned “sixty thousand men killed in a single day of combat.” I believe that was the Somme, though I filled that in.</p>
<p>I actually wasn’t sure that Agnes had a miscarriage. At the beginning of Part 3, “Of course it is not always easy for a woman of forty to conceive. What might seem a significant delay can be a mere irregularity. Before the steamer reached New York, I learned that I was no longer pregnant, if indeed I ever had been.” This might be intended to be left uncertain. Or it might be that the reader is supposed to decide one way or the other, based on the rest of the book–perhaps specifically the reference to Lillian’s daughter, who died shortly after birth.</p>
<p>The affair with Karl was difficult for me to react to emotionally in the way that I think one was intended to react. I may have been reading the novel a little too much with the spy-thriller expectation that Agnes would reveal something of catastrophic import to Karl. So in that sense, the end of the affair with the leap into the Nile seemed anticlimactic. I think it was difficult for me to appreciate Karl’s importance emotionally, although one has to, to really “get” the book. I can do it by analogy–if Agnes were someone I actually knew, then I would see the importance of Karl to her. But I didn’t really feel it directly. I think partly I was thrown off by Karl’s comment about Lawrence: " ‘I came to know him rather well . . .’ Suddenly, a cloud seemed to pass over him." Also, I couldn’t remember what exactly (if anything) Karl had said to Agnes about his wife, to make her conclude that she was “dead or discarded.” Perhaps it was just the tragic impact of the flu epidemic on her own family that made her leap to conclusions?</p>