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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In his longest novel, written in 1970, Nobel Prize-winning Australian author Patrick White examines the question of an artist’s creativity, where it comes from, whether it can be controlled, and what obligations, if any, accompany it. As he traces the life of Hurtle Duffield from the age of four until his death as an elderly (and successful) avant-garde artist, we see Duffield always as somehow different from his peers. The son of a laundress and a bottle collector, Hurtle is from birth inspired, painting large images on walls as a toddler, but he recognizes at an early age that “people look down at their plates if you said something was ‘beautiful.'” To provide him with opportunities which will allow his genius to flourish, his parents sell him, when he is four years old, to the wealthy family for which his mother works. (Just click on the title to see full review.)
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Posted in Australia, Classic Novel, Literary on Jan 9th, 2011
This complex, exciting, and tension-filled Australian novel by Patrick White begins as the straightforward story of Mary Hare, a strange, half-mad spinster who lives in Xanadu, a crumbling “pleasure dome,” with the busybody Mrs. Jolley, a servant she fears. At various times in her meanderings outside Xanadu, Mary meets a kind laundress named Mrs. Godbold, who lives in a shed with her nine children; Alf Dubbo, an often-drunk aborigine artist; and Mordecai Himmelfarb, a Jewish concentration camp survivor who has emigrated to Australia and now works in a machine shop. In succeeding sections, in which these characters overlap, their intricate interior lives are developed in colorful, memorable detail, and the reader quickly sees that each is a lonely survivor of some traumatic experience which has made him/her question the nature of good and evil. Each hopes to unravel some of the mysteries at the center of the universe.
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In her most playful and exuberant novel, Virginia Woolf writes the “historical biography” of Orlando, a young boy of nobility during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. A wild ride through four centuries, the novel shows Orlando aging, magically, only thirty-six years between 1588 and 1928. Even more magically, he also changes from a man to a woman. As she explores Orlando’s life, Woolf also explores the differing roles of men and women in society during various periods, ultimately concluding that one’s role as a man or woman is determined by society, rather than by birth. (Just click on the title to see full review.)
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In what many call her most autobiographical novel, Virginia Woolf creates a warm and intimate portrait of a family which resembles her own–her parents, brothers and sisters–and the friends with whom they enjoy their summer vacation on the Isle of Skye in the Hebrides. Mrs. Ramsay, the mother of eight children, is the linchpin of the fictional family. She adores her husband, and though she often feels she fails him, she persists in smoothing his way so that he can work, managing the house and children, and inviting large groups of his students and friends to visit. Often strict and always right, Mr. Ramsay loves being the center of praise, but rarely praises others, and is often insensitive to the hopes and dreams of his children. No unifying plot and no unifying voice tie the three sections of the novel together, and many of the early characters play little role in the ending, yet in her hands the novel “works.” Woolf captures not only the passage of time but also the effects of time on all of her characters as they continue their lives, however changed, following in the footsteps of experimental writers like James Joyce, and taking literary chances which place her work with the best of the twentieth century. (Click on the title to see full review.)
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