James Tait Black Memorial Prizes
The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot
Book Information
- Publisher
- Faber & Faber
- Published
- 2008-05-29
- Pages
- 350 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 12.6 x 2.11 x 19.79 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780571243594
- ISBN-10
- 0571243592
- Price
- 8476 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Literary
Meg Eliot is the wife of a successful barrister and with that comes a lovely home in Westminster, cocktail parties and a round of charity committees. She is the model wife and her life is one of ease, contentment and privilege. All that changes though when she is suddenly left widowed after a senseless tragedy. Totally alone she is thrust into a struggle to reconstruct her life as she realises that she doesn't really know who she is anymore or who she is supposed to be. The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot follows Meg as she tries to make sense of the realities of life, of living and contemplates the future and its possibilites. What she finds is the ability to survive and, also, the joys of new friendships, new opportunities and perhaps even the idea of a new love. Described by the Daily Telegraph as 'one of fiction's great female creatures', Meg Eliot is a powerful heroine who inspired readers when she first appeared in 1958.
Sir Angus Wilson CBE was born in Bexhill, Sussex, in 1913, the youngest of six boys, and grew up in a series of residential hotels after his family ran through their inheritance. After Westminster School and Oxford University, he joined the British Museum Library. In World War II, he worked as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, where the stress caused a breakdown and he took up writing as therapy. After the war, he returned to the British Museum and replaced 300,000 books that had been destroyed. Following the success of his second novel, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956), he gave up his job to dedicate time to writing. Homosexuality was still illegal, yet Wilson always wrote freely about his world; some libraries refused to stock his novels. Wilson became a Professor of English Literature at the University of East Anglia from 1966 to 1978, and jointly with Malcolm Bradbury, established their ground-breaking MA in Creative Writing in 1970. He always insisted that his life companion Tony Garrett was acknowledged as his partner (Garrett was fired from his job as a probation officer). He and Tony left England for France in 1985, but Wilson's illness forced their return. The Royal Literary Fund supported Wilson in his final years. He died in 1991.
Reviews
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I purchased The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot for a dear friend in the UK to read on his Birthday week in Dorset. He was amazed how quickly it came.....2 days in time to travel with him. Angus Wilson is a very special novelist and his novel about a woman starting over and rebuilding her life just when she felt secure and settled. This new life that is thrust upon her gives her the opportunity to open her heart to her brother and his dying lover. The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot is a lovely understated, quietly sensitive statement of human endurance.
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I decided to add "an incredible find" to the title of the review because I am appalled that most of Angus Wilson's works are listed at the level below 1,000,000 on the Kindle list! There seems to be little appreciation for Modern English literature unless one is first exposed to it as an adaptation for Masterpiece Theater. Well onto the novel. To synopsize the story would not do justice to the author's skill in manipulating our emotions but I shall try to present a hint of flavor of the book. Briefly, 43 year old Meg Eliot goes on a world trip with her husband who proceeds to get murdered in an Asia airport attempting to save the intended. So, 10% into the book we have the widow but prior to that the author has established all that we will need to know about their marriage and personalities. How this occurrence and subsequent actions lead to a genteel and mild nervous breakdown is the focal point of the book. No, this not Olivia DeHaviland in"Snake Pit." The next anchor in her life is her brother, David, who has just lost his long term companion with whom he shared a nursery. A large segment of the book revolves around how they both evolve and strengthen each other. The cast of characters in the book are fully developed and their problems thoroughly explained. There are enough incidents in this book that have the ring of authenticity and they are so naturally slipped into context that one is amazed. I said naturally as in Flaubert, so a brief mention of several incidents handled with tack, understanding and absolutely no sensationalism will illustrate the point. They are, constant suggestions about remarriage from some quarters, an attempted rape by the son of one of Meg's old friends, an incident with a "bottom pincher" on the beach, the angst of retraining and entering the job market. This novel has not one unbelievable character or incident, although I do find the portraiture of the British consul's wife a bit hard to take. Mr. Wilson can be witty, solemn, pessimistic and comedic all in one paragraph. This novel is certainly not a period piece although is is true to its period and as contemporary as it is modern. So if you want a to see how Flaubert and Jane Austen still echo in the creative mind, expose yourself to Sir Angus' genius.
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I would have enjoyed this book very much as the story is good, but the errors, grammatical and typing errors spoilt it for me. Whoever proof read it did a very poor job indeed.
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This is an excellent novel from a highly neglected author..Angus Wilson has fallen out of fashion in recent years but those who take the plunge are in for a treat..up there with best 20th century British writers.
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hope its a good read