Allan Gurganus's 1989 novel Oldest Confederate Widow Tells All is 700-plus pages full of astonishing prose. In it, a woman called Lucy Marsden, born (she reports) in 1884, recounts the story of her lengthy and adventure-studded life. Much of it, she relates with extraordinary vivacity, was spent as the wife of Civil War veteran Willie Marsden, 35 years her senior -- a private who'd raised his rank to captain as the years went on. As Gurganus puts stunning phrases into Lucy's mouth, he shifts from tone to tone and mood to mood with breathtaking facility, but it's not only his mastery of fiction techniques that distinguishes the book; there is also, as the stories accumulate, his jubilant aff[...]