A House of Children (New Directions Paperbook, Ndp631) [Paperback]

Joyce Cary (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1986 | Series: New Directions Paperbook, Ndp631 (Book 631)

A semi-autobiographical tale, this story draws upon Cary's own upbringing to tell of a young boy's holidays spent on the Donegal coast, across the lough from Derry. Evelyn and his siblings play happily, but already the responsibilities and disappointments of adulthood are beckoning. 1

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Joyce Cary was born in 1888 into an old Anglo-Irish family in Londonderry, Ireland. At the age of sixteen he studied painting, first in Edinburgh and then in Paris. From 1909 to 1912 he was at Trinity College, Oxford, where he read law. He then fought and served in the Red Cross in the Balkan War of 1912-13. Thereafter, having joined the Colonial Service in 1914, he served in the Nigeria Regiment during the First World War. He was wounded while fighting in the Cameroons, and returned to civil duty in Nigeria in 1917 as a district officer. West Africa became the locale of his early novels. Cary settled in Oxford in 1920, and died there in 1957. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 239 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (November 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811210081
• ISBN-13: 978-0811210089
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,203,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #64 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > General

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful novel of childhood, April 11, 2006

By 

Bomojaz (South Central PA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: House of Children (Everyman S.) (Paperback)

From its Proustian beginning to its Joycean overtones, this is a wonderful novel about childhood - the magical, imaginative world inhabited by children. Evelyn Corner, the main character who is now an adult, reflects back on the days of his youth, especially the long summer days spent with childhood friends and relatives at swimming parties and sailing, exploring the rural countryside, getting into mischief. He and the others decide to write and perform a play, and it's a huge disaster. Later on they are all taken to a performance of Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST, and Corner is transformed: the experience pushes him to become the writer he now is. (Cary admitted the novel was autobiographical.) But it's not so much what the children do that makes reading this book so satisfying, but rather the sensations that are fostered from the memory of those things. It reminded me somewhat of what Alice's sister must have experienced after Alice has awakened from her dream of Wonderland. Life is mysterious and marvelous, but it's also rather sad because out knowledge and perceptions are ever changing as circumstances change. Corner experiences this with regard to his father. This is an early Cary effort, and it's one of his best books.