The Season of Lillian Dawes: A Novel [Paperback]

Katherine Mosby (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

From the acclaimed writer of Private Altars, comes a story of driving lyrical force set in Manhattan in the 1950s. When he is expelled from boarding school, Gabriel Gibbs is sent to live with his older brother Spencer in New York. Rather than a punishment, this becomes an exhilarating invitation to a dazzling world, from smoking cigars at the Plaza Hotel to weekend house parties filled with tennis and cocktails. It is in this heady atmosphere -- from white-gloved Park Avenue to literary Greenwich Village -- that Gabriel first glimpses the elusive Lillian Dawes. Free-spirited and mysterious, Lillian captures the imaginations of those in "all the best circles," including both brothers. As their lives entwine, so begins the powerful and poignant unraveling of innocence.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

While Katherine Mosby's cool, feline prose is entirely her own, careful readers will hear the faint echoes of Edith Wharton and Henry James in this beguiling second novel, The Season of Lillian Dawes. In the wake of some adolescent antics at his private school, Gabriel Gibbs, a member of an extended aristocratic family in a privileged segment of society in post-World War II New York, is expelled. He is sent to live on West Ninth Street with his older brother Spencer, a poet and wit, who a female acquaintance describes as "one of those tall, charming men you know would be absolutely useless in an emergency." Here he first learns of the mysterious Lillian Dawes, whose allure, like that of Max Beerbohm's femme fatale, Zuleika Dobson, rests in part on her beauty and vivacity and in part on her perplexing air of detachment. But Lillian is not as detached as she seems. Only after her sudden disappearance from the lives of Gabriel and Spencer does her own troubling quest come to light. The Season of Lillian Dawes is a novel of distinction, with acid Salingeresque dialogue balanced by elegiac renderings of Manhattan in the 1950s. --Regina Marler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Mosby's sensuous, lyrical prose, highly praised in her debut novel, Private Altars, is the saving grace of her second book, which turns out to be a contrived and inflated story that's long on atmosphere but short on credibility. The Gibbs brothers, Spencer and Gabriel, are scions of a humorless, oppressive blueblood family that takes snobbism to new extremes. Now orphans, the siblings have rebelled against their straightlaced relatives, and when 17-year-old Gabriel is expelled from boarding school, he moves in with his older brother in a seedy apartment in lower Manhattan. It's the 1950s, and a halcyon time for those in high society. Indeed, the rich are "shamelessly selfindulgent," while such humble figures as a men's room attendant and an elderly shoeshine "boy" show true nobility. While Spencer labors on a book of short stories, the preternaturally observant Gabriel wanders about New York, where one day he gets a glimpse of the tantalizingly mysterious Lillian Dawes, a beautiful woman in her 20s. Lillian is radiant and kind, and although Gabriel discovers that she uses several names and refuses to speak about her past, his adolescent crush grows acute after he and Spencer attend a Gatsbyesque house party where Gabriel becomes the unlikely confidant of several of the guests, including Lillian. When Spencer and Lillian fall in love, the course of Gabriel's loss of innocence begins. Mosby works too hard at making Lillian enchanting and multitalented and Gabriel presciently ubiquitous, and at portraying the rich as caricatures (one eccentric character takes her own heavy silverware to good restaurants, lest the house flatware not have the right weight). The melodramatic denouement, clumsily foreshadowed from the beginning, moves the book into the realm of overheated romantic fiction. That's too bad, because Mosby's elegant, poetic prose is as smooth and shimmering as velvet. One hopes she can create a more credible plot next time. 5-city author tour.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060936959
• ISBN-13: 978-0060936952
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,893,010 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A COMPELLING STORY RESONANTLY READ, May 2, 2002

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Season of Lillian Dawes, The (Audio Cassette)

Jeff Woodson, one of America's premier voice artists, gives resonant reading to this tale of fascination and obsession. Those who heard Woodson's rendering of "Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil" well know the qualities he brings to a voice presentation.

When young Gabriel Gibbs, son of an affluent attorney, is kicked out of prep school he is remanded to the care of his older brother, Spencer. That really isn't too hard to take as Spencer lives in a Greenwich Village apartment and determines that what Gabriel needs is an education in the way the world works. Of course, it is a very privileged world.

It is not too long before Gabriel spies the mysterious Lillian Dawes. She is unlike any of the other women he has come across in the City, and he is smitten. So is Spencer. When Lillian and Spencer become a couple it seems to be the perfect pairing. But, we all know how the course of true love runs and each harbors secrets from the other.

As an observer, although an emotionally involved one, Gabriel learns more than he might have in prep school - he learns about masks and what lies beneath them, he discovers the importance of being true to oneself.

It is a compelling story from which all of us may make discoveries.

- Gail Cooke

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny and touching, May 23, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Season of Lillian Dawes: A Novel (Hardcover)

The epigraph for this brilliant novel is from Flaubert: "Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat melodies fit to make bears dance when we long to make the stars weep." Katherine Mosby does both in this novel, which for me was laugh out loud funny several times, as well as touching, haunting, and thought provoking. It is filled with eccentric characters who populate a deliciously rich evocation of New York in 1954. There were a few improbabilities that broke the spell for me a bit at the end, but I see the effect she was trying for in trying to make the stars weep. She almost makes it.

I hope next time Katherine Mosby allows herself to write a funny and sensual love story where we get to be in the main character's shoes.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What fun.... with wit, intelligence and humor to spare!, June 5, 2003

By 

K. Corn "reviewer" (midwest, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Season of Lillian Dawes: A Novel (Paperback)

I can't remember the last time I had so much fun reading a novel that purports to be a comedy of manners but is also a heartwarming look at the eccentricities found in families and of the ties that bond those families together - in spite of themselves. Filled with humor and warmth, this one is an absolute stand-out, not to be missed.
At the heart of this book is Gabriel Gibbs, a young boy struggling to find himself after being thrown out of an upscale boarding school. Luckily he has his wise, if unconventional, brother Spencer to look after him as well as a muse in the form of the mysterious Lillian Dawes, a woman who is both more and less than she seems. She touches the heart of both Gabriel and his brother, leading them towards an unpredictable conclusion.