Considered by Hartley to be the most accomplished of his works, Simonetta Perkins is a brilliantly observed tale of desire and guilt. Set against a glorious Venetian backdrop, it explores the nature of physical temptation, creating a complex psychological work deeply reminiscent of Henry James. Visiting Venice with her mother, Bostonian ingénue Lavinia Johnstone soon tires of their fellow American tourists and her mother’s unstinting attempts to find her a husband. Increasingly, she withdraws into herself, her diary being the only outlet for her deep-seated frustrations. And it is in her diary that she begins to explore the extraordinary sensations that she experiences when her gaze falls on an extremely attractive Venetian gondolier. L.P. Hartley, a proliflc story writer and novelist, is best remembered for his masterpiece The Go-Between.
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Desire under false pretences,
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This review is from: Simonetta Perkins (Hesperus Classics) (Paperback)
LP Hartley's first major published work is less forced than his later, more canonical THE GO-BETWEEN and more controlled than EUSTACE AND HILDA. Although it owes much (too much) to Henry James and E. M. Forster and Edith Wharton, it's still a memorable novella, especially in its evocations of a tourists' Venice that is more ultimately more recognizable (and sensual) than Mann's or James's, even if it lacks the other writers' intellectual rigor. Wealthy, attractive Lavinia Johnstone is in Venice with her formidable Boston Brahmin mother after disappoiinting the latter by refusing four estimable suitors; while acting the tourist, she becomes enamored of a handsome gondolier even if she refuses to admit this to herself. She writes a friend for advice, transferring the desire for the gondolier onto a fictitious friend--"Simonetta Perkins"--, all the while denying the truth of her attraction to the gondolier, to her mother, or to herself. How long can Lavinia remain in the closet from her desire, and what should happen if she should venture out? The novella is made all the more fascinating given Hartley's own sexual orientation, which puts the idea of Lavinia's masked desire into a different focus.
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