As in Tuck Everlasting (1975), Babbitt's narrative in The Eyes of the Amaryllis seeks to establish a historical distance, a sense that the work takes place in another era that is connected to ours, but also remains vaguely fabulous. She begins her book with a quotation from the Song of Solomon and follows that with an almost Elizabethan prologue in which Seward, the ghost, speaking in an elevated style, addresses "all you people lying lazy on the beach," presumably today's Cape Cod vacationers, who do not understand the true "meaning of the sea." Seward describes in romantic terms the loss of the ship named Amaryllis and the tragic events surrounding it. The language of the novel itself is more restrained, but still somewhat old-fashioned. The strange events seem reminiscent of an old tale, calling to mind any number of Shakespeare's plays from The Tempest to A Winter's...