Weymouth Sands (Harper Colophon Books, Cn 1164) [Paperback]

John Cowper Powys (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1984 | Series: Harper Colophon Books, Cn 1164 (Book 1164)

'Along with "Wolf Solent", "A Glastonbury Romance" and "Maiden Castle", this modern classic, originally published in 1934, forms the quartet that 'are just about the only novels produced by an English writer that can fairly be compared with the fictions of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky" - George Steiner, "The New Yorker'. Drawing on his vivid childhood memories of the seaside town of Weymouth, Powys tells the story of Jobber Skald - a large, somewhat brutish man, obsessed with the urge to kill the local magnate of the town because of the man's contempt for the workers of the local quarry - and his redeeming love for Perdita Wane, a young girl from the Channel Islands. "Weymouth Sands" boasts a striking collection of human oddities, including a famous clown and his mad brother, a naive Latin teacher, a young philosopher, and an abortionist. Against the mysterious and haunting background of the sea, the sands, and the stones of Dorset coast, Powys weaves together his characters' ever-fascinating patterns of behaviour into an epic tale which depicts the power of Eros, the inscrutability of the universe, and the nature of madness, while highlightling Powys' deep sympathy for the variety, eccentricity, and essential loneliness of human beings.

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

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in Powys, with many of his books returning to print. Those who have read him know that his novels encompass a great deal. This 1934 title follows the lives of protagonist Jobber Skald and the inhabitants of the British seaside town of Weymouth Sands. Skald holds a secret desire to kill a brutish quarry owner and a secret love for Perdita Wane.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

"Thousands of baby boom readers who grew up with Tolkein now want to spend their mature adulthood with the chronicles of Powys" - Independent. "An intricate, provocative and living example of the novel which takes people as it finds them... The cool, calm impersonability of Weymouth Sands, and the author's all but diabolical power to peer beneath the surface, combine to make it a book of moment" - New York Times. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 567 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins (September 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060911646
• ISBN-13: 978-0060911645
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,431,391 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A calm, grey masterpiece, June 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Weymouth Sands (Paperback)

Powys's scene is the overarching image for this silent, serene, sad book. The sands at Weymouth, and the sea lapping, or crashing, on them reflect the human drama, the human heart. The book is filled with unforgettable people, and Powys delves quietly beneath their conventional surfaces to reveal their torment, joy, longing.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finding a gossamer-seed, August 29, 2006

By 

Daniel Myers (Greenville, SC USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Weymouth Sands (Paperback)

Another extraordinary (and impossible to review, really) book from John Cowper Powys: The only things to which I can compare it are Proust, from whose depths Powys has clearly imbibed, and The Glastonbury Romance, except that this work seems much the much deeper and sadder of the two Powys works, touching on the subjects most dear to Powys, without any tangents regarding the Holy Grail legend etc. If one could put a name to the abiding undercurrent here, and one can't really, it would be Animism. Every dancing seaweed, incoming tide and rocky promontory seems suffused with a dynamic and personality of its own with a peculiar force over every character. This book is also the sadder of the two, but it is the sadness that arises from the unraveling of the deeps of human existence. Dostoyevsky is NOT the writer to which Powys should be compared---That writer is Proust. Powys is the only writer in English who comes even close to Proustian depths. Laurence Durrell made a stab at it in The Alexandria Quartet, but failed miserably----as far as his stated, hubristic intent to outdo both Proust AND Joyce in those four works. But Powys is not hubristic, thus his success. Becoming absorbed in this book, one eventually gets the feeling

"...as if there were always blowing a faint, supernatural wind through this world, holding a secret of assuagement for troubled hearts, that is only perceptible when it can find a straw, a feather, a gossamer-seed, a leaf, in the debris of circumstance light enough for it to stir." P.541

It is a lovely, sad (at times also comic), deep book of wisdom. Scarce wonder that Powys never made it into a hidebound English Lit. Syllabus!

So, read and take delight. You won't be graded!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Phantasmagoric, December 7, 2006

By 

Eddie Watkins (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Weymouth Sands (Hardcover)

This one seems to have been pulled from the most watery depths of Powys' imagination. It is saturated with an inscrutable feminine element, a mysterious plexus of forces. As much as I like most of his other books this one seems the most naturally magical, not as often forced as the others. The plot possibly suffers from his giving in to the dreamy depths of his imagination, but I welcome the richness of sheer strange atmosphere he manages because of this limitation.