Dusty Answer (Virago Modern Classics) [Paperback]

Rosamond Lehmann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2003 | Series: Virago Modern Classics

'Mamma was fast asleep at home, her spirit lapped in unconsciousness. Her dreams would not divine that her daughter had stolen out to meet a lover. And next door also they slept unawares, while one of them broke from the circle and came alone to clasp a stranger ...' Judith Earle, over-earnest and inexperienced, has always been a little in love with each of the four cousins who come to stay next door and, on her return from Cambridge, becomes madly in love with one of them - Roddy, a 'sensation-hunter'. "Dusty Answer" traces with delicate nostalgia childhood friendships and the pangs of thwarted young love. "Dusty Answer", Lehmann's first novel, was published to sensational acclaim in 1927, and became a landmark book of the inter-war period, shocking in its time, capturing the voice of the younger generation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'She is immensely readable, acute, passionate, funny and original' Elizabeth Jane Howard *'A true original, far in advance of most other female novelists, both among her contemporaries and those who came after, following , or rather stumbling, in her wake' Anita Brookner 'The candour and wit of her observation, her capacity for evoking atmosphere, 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

About the Author

Rosamond Lehmann was born in 1901. After completing her degree at Girton College, Cambridge, she married Wogan Philipps, the artist. In her early twenties, she wrote her first novel, DUSTY ANSWER. This was followed by several other novels, all available in the Virago Modern Classics list. She was made a CBE in 1982 and died in 1990 at the age of 89.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Virago Pr (October 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1860497845
• ISBN-13: 978-1860497841
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,632,445 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 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.