So I did eventually get around to re-reading the last of Sarah Caudwell’s Hilary Tamar books, The Sibyl in Her Grave, and was immediately sorry I hadn’t done it sooner. I’d been thinking that it was much drearier, longer, and less good than the others, but I was entirely wrong: I think it’s probably the best of the four [*], and though there is a thread that I find very difficult to read, it’s like Frodo and Sam in Mordor in that it takes up much less of the book than I’d remembered.
Also, when I said the first time through that I was “rather tempted to read as a meditation on chronic illness”? Apparently I missed the bit where that comparison is explicitly drawn (the letter in chapter 21).
[*] It’s the kind of jump that I imagine Harriet Vane’s novels taking post-Have His Carcase, if that helps. (Apparently I am feeling very literarily-referential tonight.)