The Partnership [Paperback]

Barry Unsworth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2001

Booker Prize-winning author Barry Unsworth's first novel, published for the first time in the United States.

Foley and Moss are partners in a successful small business, making plaster pixies for the tourist trade. Foley is the artistic member of the partnership; he thinks up the ideas and designs and has pretensions to even greater artistry in his cherub lamps and fixtures. Moss, the seemingly quiet one who supplied the capital for the venture, manufactures them. Barry Unsworth sets his scene magnificently—a Cornish village, Lanruan, thriving on specious tourism, and its local characters: Graham, the primitive painter; Bailey, the loud-mouthed Northerner who comes to Lanruan to make his fortune; Barbara, the nearest thing the village possesses to a bad girl; and above all Gwendoline, who, inadvertently, begins the rift in the partnership between Foley and Moss. The Partnership is a disquieting, darkly funny tale about hidden desires and the unspoken attachments we have for one another.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The inner lives and secret loves of plastic pixie manufacturers animate the drab backstage of the tourist trade in Booker Prize-winner Unsworth's (Sacred Hunger; Morality Play) eloquent but predictable first novel, written in the 1960s but published only now in the U.S. Foley, a self-absorbed ex-photographer's model, and his stodgy, repressed housemate, Moss, run a cottage industry producing pixies for the gift shops of the Cornish coast, where they live. Foley dreams of one day expanding into the more rarefied niche of gilt-cherub making, and keeps a surreal, shrine-like room filled with prototypes. Meanwhile, he spends his time alternately attempting to seduce Gwendoline, a big-boned, perpetually nonplussed local girl, and fending off the attentions of Barbara, a randy, middle-aged summer visitor. Moss, on the other hand, seems to have few ambitions or desires other than to keep churning out pixies and to maintain the status quo. But when Moss meets Max, the aging kept man of a famous actor, he is emboldened by Max's flamboyance to confront his own sexuality and reexamine his partnership with Foley. Unsworth renders the psychology of his characters with precision; he is especially articulate when narrating the tactical psychological ploys beneath the surface of casual conversation. But despite their complexity, and with the exception of Graham, a hilariously misanthropic painter, the characters are lifeless and unsurprising. Similarly, the novel is rife with delightful descriptive passages, biting reflections on the cynicism of the tourist industry, and iconic symbols pixies, cherubs, plaster skulls, a ram who has starved to death while stuck in a bog whose effects are hamstrung by the ponderousness of the plot. Read as a first novel, it shows great promise, but that promise has already been realized. All but the most diehard Unsworth fans may want to wait for his next mature effort.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Originally copyrighted in 1966, Booker Prize-winning author Unsworth's first book is finally being published in the United States. The novel describes the breakdown of the relationship between two partners, Moss and Foley, who have relocated to a tourist village in Cornwall and operate a profitable business making what can only be described as tacky tourist mementos. Unsworth describes the pixies made by Moss and Foley as mutants emerging from molds whose edges are "worn and blunted," which in many ways describes the characters themselves. Self-indulgent, manipulative, and deceitful, Moss and Foley have sown the seeds of their mutual destruction, and the supporting characters also have exaggerated features that extend beyond human foibles to flaws, rendering them unsympathetic to the reader. In reference to the pixies, Unsworth contends that "things ugly in themselves can none the less suggest beauty," and perhaps he is challenging the reader to find the redeeming features of his characters. The novel is flawed, however, in the failure of its characters to develop and recognize their relationships, thus leaving the reader curiously unsatisfied by the wanton destruction of both art and spirit. Recommended only where there is demand and interest in Unsworth. Caroline M Hallsworth, Sudbury P.L., Ont.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (August 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393321479
• ISBN-13: 978-0393321470
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,005,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An early work, which might have dated a little, January 5, 2008

By 

Philip Spires "Author of Mission, an African ... (La Nucia, Spain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Partnership (Paperback)

The Partnership was Barry Unsworth's first novel and feels rather different in both style and content from most of his other books. It deals with a business arrangement, and therefore relationship of sorts between Foley and Moss. They design and manufacture plaster pixies for the tourist trade in a Cornish seaside village. There's a division of labour between them and as the book progresses, divisions of other sorts emerge as well.

There's a hint of Under Milk Wood about the setting, though there's no attempt at poetry. What we do have, however, is a portrayal of a small community that is impinged upon by outsiders and their ideas. Not that all of the characters were born and bred Cornish. They weren't, and so to some extent the book covers some similar ground to Julian Barnes's England England. But it is both more and less than this.

The Partnership is about the psychology and the mechanics of the relationship between Mss and Foley. Quite different in personality as well as other highly significant traits, they cooperate to achieve a common goal. Perhaps like any relationship, their pragmatic business arrangement succeeds while its boundaries are defined and agreed. Its success is limited, however, and both yearn for something else. What they individually desire leads eventually to their becoming incompatible, however.

The Partnerrship is a must for someone like me who is a confirmed addict of Barry Unsworth's work, but it is definitely not a place to start. Some of the issues the book deals with have dated, as have the ways in which they are treated. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, once I had come to terms with its limitations.