A collection comprising a novel followed by fifteen stories. The novel is set in the mid-1930s in backwater Essex. The stories are all concerned with the enigma that people make of themselves and have a diversity of settings.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In the title novel of these intricate and brooding fictions about English life (the other 15 pieces in this collection are short stories), Frame recasts the biblical tale of the virtuous wife Susanna accused in her bath. An elderly judge recalls how, as a young lawyer in a gossipy English town in the 1930s, he became obsessed with the case of voluptuous Vivien Davies. Two grotesque elders, finding her barelegged by her garden pool, had charged her with lewd conduct. Over the years, the lawyer tracks Vivien's relations with many men, and continues to ponder the enigma of this sultrily provocative woman. A number of the stories bear thematic affinities with the novel in emphasizing the inscrutably secretive nature of peoples' lives. In "The Chinese Garden," an investigator whose wife has left him takes his small daughter to the scene where a woman was bizarrely murdered and re-creates the act in his imagination. A married man in "Rendezvous" carries on an affair with a woman for 25 years, not knowing whether she had aborted their child. The narrator in "Fruits de Mer" observes doomed fish swimming in tanks in a restaurant and invents intrigues about the other diners. He confides, "My 'story' is about being on the fringes of other peoples' stories." Frame, who lives in Scotland, writes in the manner of an updated Hardy or Meredith. His fiction reveals a ripe, meditative, often voyeuristic view of sexuality as a dark, enmeshing force.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet.
|
|||
|
Video reviews
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
