Dusty Answer (Virago Modern Classics) [Paperback]

Rosamond Lehmann (Author), Jonathan Coe (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2006 | Series: Virago Modern Classics

Dusty Answer is Judith Earle's story—her solitary childhood spent in the seclusion of her riverside house, her awkward, intense experiences at Cambridge rounded with passion and disillusionment, and her travels abroad with her elegant, socialite mother. Above all, this novel is about Judith's consuming relationship with the Fyfe family, who each fall in love with Judith, transforming her young womanhood.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Lehmann has always written brilliantly of women in love, of mothers and daughters MARGARET DRABBLE The lyrical, sensuous quality of her descriptive writing and her clear yet compassionate insight into individual psychology puts her immediately into the front rank of English writers THE TIMES It will consume you entirely, transforming your whole inner life for the time it takes to read Jonathan Coe

About the Author

Rosamond Lehmann (1901-1990) was born in Buckinghamshire and educated privately before going to Girton College, Cambridge, as a scholar. She was made a CBE in 1982 and remains one of the most distinguished writers of the 20th century.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Virago UK (March 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1844082946
• ISBN-13: 978-1844082940
• Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 4.8 x 7.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #780,829 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very well written, July 4, 1999

By 

Laura Canon "longtime reader" (Henderson, NV USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dusty Answer (Textbook Binding)

This is the kind of book that you can re-read. (I have several times.) It's really very sad that it and so many of Rosamond Lehmann's other books are out of print. The plot is about a young English girl who falls in love with the family next door...over several years, as she grows up, goes to Cambridge, goes out into the world she keeps meeting various members and has relationships with them. If you like English writers like Elizabeth Taylor or Mary Webb as well as "women's fiction" I would highly recommend not only this book but Lehmann's others, especially "Invitation to the Waltz" and "The Weather in the Streets."

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars intense and impassioned, September 6, 2006

By 

Margaret Johnston (Seabeck, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dusty Answer (Virago Modern Classics) (Paperback)

_Dusty Answer_ was Lehmann's first novel, published in 1927 when she was just 26. Sales were slow and not much critical notice was taken of the book until Alfred Noyes gave it a glowing review in the Sunday Times, making _Dusty Answer_ a bestseller almost overnight. Its heroine, Judith Earle, is an intelligent, earnest girl who becomes entangled in the lives of five cousins who have occasionally visited at the house next door to Judith's; Judith played with them as a child, and years later, comes to know them again as she enters adulthood. When they reenter her life, she falls desperately in love with one of them. It often lacks narrative drive (especially in the rather uncertain, diffuse ending), but its intense, often idyllic, and impassioned style is compelling, a foretaste of things to come.