James Tait Black Memorial Prizes
MOTHER AND SON (Virago Modern Classics)
Book Information
- Publisher
- Random House, Inc.
- Published
- 1994-02-27
- Pages
- 256 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.34 x 1.91 x 20.32 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781853812910
- ISBN-10
- 1853812919
- Price
- 3744 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Contemporary
The exacting Miranda's search for a suitable companion brings her family into contact with a very different kind of household, raising a plenitude of questions about the ability to manage alone, the difficulties of living with strangers and some strange discoveries about intimates.
Reviews
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Arbitrary Plot Twists, Lots of Dialogue (Spoiler)
Four stars instead of five because the arbitrary plot twists seem almost too arbitrary. The romantic entanglements unravel by the end of the book, but it's okay because the characters' choices of love objects seemed so arbitrary to begin with. The most genuine feelings in the book--apart from those between the mother and the son--seem held by two characters who really love their cat. The main joy, to me, in the books of Ivy Compton-Burnett is in the language, often referred to as "epigrammatic." The book consists almost entirely of dialogue, and the characters talk to one another in wonderfully stilted ways. They philosophize to one another about the meanings of their feelings and experiences, their own relationships, and the relationships of other people. Their conclusions are usually not what our would be. At the same time, the characters can be crude and funny in a more basic way: the children in the family contemptuously refer to their, um, older relative Rosebery, I ask you?) as "Rosebud," which hurts his feelings quite a bit. I bought this book although I could have gotten it from the library for free because it was the middle of the night and I had to have it now, and I don't regret the purchase.