Moonlight (Everyman's Library (Paper)) [Paperback]

Joyce Cary (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 1995 | Series: Everyman's Library (Paper)

With the death of Rose, painful memories are awakened for her younger sister Ella, forcing her to confront the tragic consequences of their family's guilt, its penchant for martyrdom and denial of romantic love. As Ella guides her niece through love, the past begins to repeat itself.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

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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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 372 pages
• Publisher: Everyman Paperbacks (November 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 046087585X
• ISBN-13: 978-0460875851
• Product Dimensions: 1 x 5.2 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,376,494 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Moonlight, May 10, 2006

By 

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

This review is from: Moonlight (Everyman's Library (Paper)) (Paperback)

As he says in the Preface to this novel, Joyce Cary wrote THE MOONLIGHT in response to Tolstoy's short novel, THE KREUTZER SONATA. He was appalled by Tolstoy's negativity toward women and marriage and decided to write a novel illustrating his own ideas about women. The novel centers around three women: Rose, her younger sister Ella, and Ella's illegitimate daughter Amanda. When Rose and Ella's mother had died, Rose took over caring for the family, sacrificing a marriage proposal in the process. (The man, James Groom, ends up marrying another sister, Bessie.) When Ella fell in love with a married man, Rose tried to come between them - and succeeded; Rose is able to take Ella's child, Amanda, away from her and gives her to another sister to raise. Now Amanda wants to marry, which delights Ella but is not satisfactory to Rose. Rose goes so far as to change her will so that Amanda will not inherit her money, which Amanda will need to get her marriage off to a good financial start. Ella sees that this will is not enforced by purposely "losing" it, but Amanda decides not to marry her intended anyway.

Most readers see Rose as a tyrannical meddler, which surprised Cary, who thought of her as a "woman of character and unselfish goodness, who had sacrificed her own happiness to her duty." There is some truth to this: Rose seems to interfere where Ella and Amanda are making obvious bad decisions. Each reader will decide for herself, but I think Cary might be off the mark here, at least the way he presents Rose. Ella is especially well drawn by Cary as she emotionally battles her stronger older sister (and loses). The scenes with Amanda, however, are the least satisfactory and don't amount to very much. Cary said he "wanted to show the different sexual ideas of two or three generations in their relation with each other, ... of the woman who serves, the woman who rebels, and the woman who is taught to conform for her own good." In this, especially of the first two types of woman, he succeeded fairly well.