| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterpiece...,
By
This review is from: Eustace and Hilda: A Trilogy (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)
Certainly the most complicated and complex set of charcters in literature. And that THE charcters count up to only two only serves to underline the essence of the book. The trilogy is basically an exploration of releationship between a very unforthcoming and rather narcisstic Eustace and the domineering Hilda. "Shrimp and the anemone" starts off the tale from their childhood and culminates with "Eustace and Hilda". Both are certainly doomed to disappointments - neither can look beyond the other. For all Hilda's success at the hospital, it is Eustace's guardian that she sees herself - moral as well as the economic guardian. One never senses any feeling in Eustace to escape this bond.Rather he is as much a slave to Hilda as she wills all to be. As the story progresses towards an intriguing climax, the tables are turned as Hilda now becomes dependant on Eustace for her medication. Eustace gears up to it gamefully - and it is reeally the final chapters of the book which explore the relationship at a direct level. All in all, it is a wondferful read. Recommended for those who love words and who do not mind a leisurely pace. A masterpiece !
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Unexpected Pleasure,
By A Customer
This review is from: Eustace and Hilda: A Trilogy (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)
I cannot imagine how I manged to go through college, a graduate program in English, and many years of teaching British literature without ever having read this book. The character development is excellent, and even when the characters are being aggravating (as they sometimes are), the reader truly cares about them and wants to see what happens next. I highly recommend this book to all fans of the well-crafted British novel. Furthermore, I recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in the ways, both healthy and unhealthy, that siblings interact.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A deeply flawed, deeply interesting work,
By
This review is from: Eustace and Hilda: A Trilogy (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)
Anita Brookner refers to this trilogy in her introduction to the NYRB edition as "a masterpiece," and it is quite clear from reading it that L.P. Hartley intended this as his artist's summa. The works are not as well known, however, as Hartley's THE GO-BETWEEN, and I think there is a reason for that: although the acccomplishments of the EUSTACE AND HILDA trilogy are genuine, it is not as polished a work as THE GO-BETWEEN. The principle problem with the trilogy is that almost all of the characters (including Hilda) exist only as they are perceived by the timid, pleasure-loving, and deeply narcissistic Eustace: thus they do not wholly "live" for us, and though Eustace himself seems quite real, he is so very sensitive that (to paraphrase Christopher Durang) you'd like to hit him. Eustace's fascination with the wealthy and with luxury inevitably bring to mind Marcel Proust, who clearly seems a model for Hartley's trilogy. The trilogy also seems modelled on Galsworthy and Meredith, however, and at times it makes for a very strange melange. It does have some fantastic set pieces, however, including Hilda's trip in the airplane with Dick Staveley and her later breakdown and its aftermath.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
See all 51 books this book cites
See all 100 books citing this book
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
|
|
