Resembling both McEwan’s Atonement and Frayn’s Spies in its plot, this 1953 novel, recently reprinted, tells of a pre-adolescent’s naive meddling in the love lives of elders, with disastrous results. Set in the summer of 1900, when the hopes and dreams for the century were as yet untarnished by two world wars and subsequent horrors, this novel is quietly elegant in style, its emotional upheavals restrained, and its 12-year-old main character, Leo Colston, so earnest, hopeful, and curious about life that the reader cannot help but be moved by his innocence. Leo’s summer visit to a friend at Brandham Hall introduces him to the landed gentry, the privileges they have assumed, and the strict social behaviors which guide their everyday lives. Bored and wanting to be helpful when his friend falls ill, Leo agrees to be a messenger carrying letters between Marian, his host’s sister, and Ted Burgess, her secret love, a farmer living nearby. (To see the full review, click on the title at the top of this excerpt.)
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The cruelties of life, both deliberate and accidental, play out with delicious irony in this very dark precursor to the modern noir novel. An elderly brother and his three aging sisters, all physically and emotionally maimed, are required, under the terms of their mother’s will, to share the rapidly deteriorating family estate, Durraghglass, near Cork, Ireland. Each of the Swift family members, firmly controlled by “Mummie” and her memory, leads an almost totally isolated, secret-filled life, unable to share feelings or care for anyone else. Their already precarious lives are tested with the unexpected arrival of Leda, a formerly glamorous, half-Jewish cousin from Austria, whom they all thought “perished in some cold, unnamed camp, most likely. Who wants sordid details?” Irony builds upon irony as Leda’s actions and remarks, often misunderstood, succeed in turning one sibling against another.
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Posted in Coming-of-age, England, Literary on Jan 11th, 2011
In what is considered to be D. H. Lawrence’s most autobiographical novel, Lawrence’s main character, Paul Morel, is a frail, artistic boy, having more in common with his mother than with his coal miner father. His mother had had some education before she married the once-attractive Walter Morel, but he eventually succumbed to alcohol and his bleak life in the pits. When Paul’s older brother, who became the mainstay of the family, left for London and later died, his mother transferred her dependence from him to Paul.
Written in 1913, the novel was shocking at the time, dealing as it does with an unhealthy relationship between mother and son, leading to the son’s subsequent inability to love women his own age. Though the novel is almost a hundred years old, it is as fresh and rewarding to read today as a contemporary novel, even when one considers the mores and prohibitions of that time period.
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Written in 1917, Summer is Wharton’s most explicitly sexual novel, tracing the awakening of Charity Royall to the sweetness of love and its power. Charity was born on “the mountain,” a place of poverty and degradation, and given over to be brought up by Lawyer Royall and his wife, residents of the town of North Dormer. When his wife dies, Lawyer Royall is hard pressed to deal with this child, choosing to ignore her most of the time, and bringing her up with little feeling, warmth, or affection. Anxious to have some independence so that she can escape, at some point, from the closed society of the village, Charity becomes the town librarian, a part-time job which gives her a small amount of her own money. There she encounters Lucius Harney, the nephew of one of the town’s leading citizens, an architect studying some of the old houses in the area. His interest in Charity soon develops into affection and then passion, and the two become lovers, a relationship which quickly develops complications. (To see the full review, click on the title.)
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Posted in Afghanistan, Coming-of-age on Jan 10th, 2011
A successful novelist now living in Fremont, California, Amir receives a phone call from his father’s former business partner, Rahim Khan, now in Pakistan. Rahim had stayed behind in Afghanistan when Amir and his father escaped to America in 1981, and he is now dying. An intimate part of the family, Rahim has long been aware of a childhood betrayal committed by Amir, one which had catastrophic consequences for others and which has tormented Amir for his entire life. “There is a way to be good again,” Rahim Shah tells him, and Amir immediately sets off for Pakistan to see him for the last time. In flashbacks, Hosseini recreates the day-to-day existence of Amir and his father, a highly successful merchant in Kabul in the 1970’s, creating a warm and emotionally involving story of childhood and its traumas and stressing the importance of family in times of trouble, as he follows the lives of Amir and his father until Amir is in his late thirties. Despite some narrative clumsiness, however, the novel is a moving, dramatic, personal, and compelling read, fascinating in its setting and in its development of the father-son relationship. I was totally engaged by its characters–and by its considerable charm. (Just click on the title to see full review.)
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