Loving Søren

I discovered this novel at my local library while looking for secondary material on Kierkegaard. It's by Caroline Coleman O'Neill and was published just this last year. Here's the first couple of paragraphs:

Regina Olsen perched on a red sofa in the Rordams' Chinese-style drawing room, adrift amid a sea of glamorous ladies. The scent of beeswax rose from the veneered floor, mingling with the aroma of coffee bubbling forth from the inflamed samovar. Soft flakes of spring snow whispered against teh leaded windowpanes, pressing toward the sea green damask curtains. The long twisted tusk of a narwhal lay on a squidshell table. Beside it, a silver bird took flight, its mother-of-pearl feathers glistening in the snowlight that draped through the windows.

"It is so very hard to find good help these days," the widow Rordam said. "Everyone who presents himself is so very unsuitable." Encased in black, the widow sat in a regal chair of red silk. A smile hovered on the corners of her once beautiful lips. The three other young ladies nodded.

Regina hoped the widow's maid wasn't listening in at the keyhole. She fingered the edge of her gown, wishing she had chosen a different one. Although it was May, she had worn a winter white dress, unconsciously echoing the colors of the snow-laden sky. The whiteness of the dress and its intricate ivory stitchwork highlighted the darkness of her hair and eyes and echoed the pale luminescence of her moonlight colored skin. At home, the dress had seemed beautiful in its simplicity, but here in the Rordams' large drawing room on the outskirts of Copenhagen, beside the mourning taffeta of the widow and the brightly colored dresses of the three other young women, Regina's dress seemed dull.

I'm not too sure about that 'inflamed samovar,' but pretty good so far, I think.