by Clare Francis (2001)
Ellen's husband, Harry has disappeared at sea, and has been presumed dead. Soon, however, secrets and financial scandals, and doubts about Harry's death arise.
Christopher Shinn
"When one man goes to war he leaves the city, his wife and brother. A year later only the wife and brother remain. In Dying City Christopher Shinn asks what happens when people and events apparently thousands of miles away affect the heart and soul of a city. Dying City premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 12 May 2006."--BOOK JACKET.
Nick Laird
From a rising British novelist, an artful meditation on love and life in contemporary LondonWhen David Pinner introduces his former teacher, the American artist Ruth Marks, to his friend and flatmate James Glover, he unwittingly sets in place a love triangle loaded with tension, guilt, and heartbreak. As David plays reluctant witness (and more) to James and Ruth's escalating love affair, he must come to terms with his own blighted emotional life. Set in the London art scene awash with new money and intellectual pretension, in the sleek galleries and posh restaurants of a Britannia resurgent with cultural and economic power, Nick Laird's insightful and drolly satirical novel vividly portrays three people whose world gradually fractures along the ineluctable fault lines of desire, truth, deceit, and jealousy. With wit, compassion, and acuity, Laird explores the very nature of contemporary romance—"The Death of Love in Modern Culture," as David puts it in one of his...
Anthony Trollope
This is one of Trollope's best novels, in the present writer's opinion. Among several intermingled plots, the story arc of Arabella Trefoil is the most rewarding. The husband-hunting Arabella is absolutely one of Trollope's best characters. She is grand-daughter to a great Duke, yet her social position is precarious, because her father was a wastrel younger son who married a woman of low birth (her father was "in trade!"). He engrossed her large fortune and squandered it, leaving his estranged wife and daughter nearly destitute, and yet with an expensive social position to maintain. Read this book for Trollope's masterly delineation of how these circumstances harrow the soul and deform the character of a young woman. With no fortune except a relentless will, Arabella must marry well to save herself from the abyss of middle-aged spinsterhood, poverty, and social death. Arabella has learned to regard the men in her life as stupid but powerful enemies against whom any cruel or dishonest treatment is thoroughly justified. Men are to be flattered, fooled and captured, or dealt with according to the laws of war. Trollope makes clear that Arabella is what her avaricious, hypocritical, patriarchal social class has made her into, and she is a sympathetic character despite her hardened heart. When she is introduced, she is nearly thirty and is nearing the end of the line as a marriageable girl. "I'll tell you what it is, mamma. I've been at it till I'm nearly broken down. I must settle somewhere;—or else die;—or else run away. I can't stand this any longer and I won't. Talk of work,—men's work! What man ever has to work as I do?" The eponymous American Senator is Elias Gotobed, of the fictional American state of Mickewa, who visits England apparently in order to inflict his opinions on everyone he meets. Trollope's senator is a self-righteous, pontificating horse's ass who offends against hospitality by lecturing and berating his hosts and their other guests at the dinner table about their laws and customs, and by meddling in local quarrels which are none of his business. In the end, the honour of England is avenged against the obnoxious Solon of Mickewa and he beats a retreat to the States with a flea in his ear. One wonders who the model(s) for this character might have been. A third storyline involves the romantic vicissitudes of Mary Masters, a country lawyer's daughter and a typical Trollopeian nice, well-principled young girl. All these stories are woven together expertly and seamlessly. This is a book to read and re-read. There are many hunting scenes, and the conversations of the horsey set are strikingly well-observed and most enjoyable, whether you approve of blood sports or not.
Bernice Rubens
Bernice Rubens is one of England's elder stateswomen of literature, and I,Dreyfus upholds her reputation for producing stately and polished fiction with a serious moral intent. For Rubens, the anti-semitism which rocked France at the turn of the last century has not gone away. This time it crops up in 1990s England. Sir Alfred Dreyfus is the headmaster of a Church of England school. His only sin has been one of omission--he has concealed his Jewish origins to further his career. However, the novel opens with Sir Alfred imprisoned for a crime far more heinous. Literary agent and fellow Jew Sam Temple (names are emblematic for Rubens, and Temple does indeed prove to be an emotional haven for Dreyfus) visits the prisoner in his cell and persuades him to write a memoir of his downfall. The resulting narrative reveals a man coming to terms with his religious identity, and reclaiming his family's past. It is a deeply felt account of spiritual renewal, and should be read as an expertly crafted parable. Fans of psychological realism may balk at the evil anti-Semites she pits against her hero, but will rally at the sly humour of her ending. --Lilian Pizzichini