Happy 2011! This was actually the last review I wrote in 2010, so I maintain that I was just ending one year on a down note, not dooming my 2011 reading list to mediocrity. 

A commenter pointed out that the book follows the plot of a Czech opera called “The Makropulos Affair,” which indeed I hadn’t heard of before reading. Here’s a description of a 2009 performance on a blog called OperaChic (awesomely aggro tag line: “I’m a young American woman living in Milan, and you’re not. I go to La Scala a lot, and you don’t.”) I stand informed, but not corrected.