To match The Leopard's feudally lavish autocratic hero, Don Fabrizio, there is the new book's feudally parsimonious autocratic heroine, Ippolita.
Its locale is Brooklyn in the late 19th century, when the borough still had its own mayor and power-hungry chieftains scrabbled feudally over a kind of Irish fiefdom.
This controversy may be heightened by Cozzens' feudally patronizing portrayal of the Negroes who serve Brocton's first families and are treated by them as near equals precisely .