A Dead Language: A Novel [Hardcover]

Peter Rushforth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 2006

The story of one man's struggle to reconcile his past in order to make way for his future.

Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton - the faithless young naval lieutenant who abandons Madam Butterfly - was glimpsed fleetingly in Peter Rushforth's previous novel, Pinkerton's Sister. Now Ben steps out of the shadows and into the centre of the stage, a young man haunted by the desolation of his boyhood years, unable to show or respond to love.

He's about to sail for Japan. But his imminent departure conjures up the life he and his sister have led, and the monstrous act for which he is most remembered: the rejection and destruction of a pure and loving heart. What happened to him then will mark his whole life. He is his own man, but he is also his sister's brother.

Once again, in his mastery of language, his extraordinary imagination, his superb sense of time and place, Peter Rushforth has given the world a second masterpiece, ranking alongside, or surpassing, his earlier triumph.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The British Rushforth (1945-2005) wrote just three novels: Kindergarten (1979), which won Britains Hawthornden Prize; Pinkerton's Sister, which appeared 25 years later to acclaim; and this follow-up to Pinkerton's, finished but unpublished at his death. It's a sprawling, stream-of-consciousness sequel that chronicles the school days of that title's namesake, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton-the same Lieutenant Pinkerton who abandons Madam Butterfly in the Gilbert & Sullivan opera. Ben is a sensitive, smart boy growing up in an upper-class upstate New York household in the waning 19th century. His sisters, his mama, his kind headmaster Dr. Crowninshield and his best friend Oliver Comstock (another misfit like himself) provide solace from a cruel father and world of manly men (or "Beards"), all shown through a time-hopping, kaleidoscopic lens of thoughts, digressions, 19th century pop culture references and witty deconstruction. As Ben and Oliver transfer from the haven of Crowninshield's school to his father's former stomping grounds, Otsego Lake Academy, each scene slows to a hilarious, manic crawl. Though comparisons to history-obsessed, stream-of-consciousness masters like Joyce and Pynchon are inevitable, Rushforth has the unique ability to draw a chapter out like a rubber band-digressing for 20 pages to, say, describe an imaginary confrontation between the town gossip and the local Reverend-and then to let it snap back with a satisfying sting. In Ben, he has crafted a character mesmerizing in his thoughtfulness and fear, setting the stage not only for Ben's heartbreaking betrayal of Butterfly (which Rushforth cleverly couches at the beginning of the story) but also, ultimately, of himself. For those who can abide repetition and Pynchon-esque disquisition, this is a novel to savor page-by-page.
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Review

Praise for Peter Rushforth:

“…compelling…Pinkerton's Sister is a very fine novel, at once sprawling and intimate, and blessed with long gorgeous passages worthy of Henry James.”
— Washington Post

“[Rushforth’s] novel constitutes an epic inquiry into literature’s role as an engine of interior life.”
— New Yorker

“Pinkerton's Sister is 729 pages long, each of those pages as wondrously unsettling as the next…a gorgeous conundrum, the result of a lifetime of close reading — and some 25 years of close writing.”
— Daniel Handler, San Francisco Chronicle

“If only more writers could be so patient. Pinkerton’s Sister is a work of rare beauty and (rarer still!) genuine wit.”
— The Believer

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 647 pages
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage; 1ST edition (November 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596921927
• ISBN-13: 978-1596921924
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,323,737 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)