Jean Stafford’s third and final novel,
The Catherine Wheel, is a mordant tour de force concerning the gradual disintegration of a woman under pressures both societal and self-imposed.
From the publisher:
Jean Stafford’s third and final novel, The Catherine Wheel, is a mordant tour de force concerning the gradual disintegration of a woman under pressures both societal and self-imposed.
Katharine Congreve, a Boston society figure, is summering at her country house in Hawthorne, Maine, in the late 1930s, looking after the children of her cousin Maeve, as she does every year. Maeve and her husband, John Shipley, spend their summers in Europe, leaving their son and two daughters in Katharine’s care, but something is different this time: Shipley has promised to leave his wife for Katharine if his failing marriage with Maeve can’t be revived before the end of their vacation.
Alone with the frivolous Honor and Harriet, teenage twins, and the younger Andrew, who seems to be hiding a private anguish of his own, Katharine must contend with her envy, her memories, her expectations, and her guilt. Under the watchful eyes of her charges and neighbors, a hint of madness is soon revealed at the heart of a happy, lazy New England summer
The Irish estate home Dene’s Court has been empty for years—its icy visage, shuttered windows, and overgrown tennis court are a burden for its caretakers and a curiosity for the nearby townspeople. And so the announcement that Violet Dene Gordon and her husband, Charles, are on their way back from British Burma to settle in the long-dormant estate sends a ripple of excitement through the sleepy village.
The Irish estate home Dene’s Court has been empty for years—its icy visage, shuttered windows, and overgrown tennis court are a burden for its caretakers and a curiosity for the nearby townspeople. And so the announcement that Violet Dene Gordon and her husband, Charles, are on their way back from British Burma to settle in the long-dormant estate sends a ripple of excitement through the sleepy village.
For Violet, Dene’s Court stands as a monument to her childhood, but lingering doubts remain about whether she and Charles will be happy there. Adding complexity to the arrangement is the arrival of Violet’s American niece, a college student named Sally who has been sent by her mother in an effort to put an ocean between the impetuous young woman and the object of her affection, an actor.
Anxiety, tempers, and long-buried emotions flare as the estate’s new residents search for a sense of belonging and peace between its hallowed and serene walls. [Open Road Media]
First published in 1952,
The Landsmen was the first volume of a projected trilogy, and was written to establish a sense of Jewish identity as the background for a large fictional examination of Jewish-American life.
The Landsmen is a novel of Jewish-American roots. Set in the village of Golinsk in Czarist Russia at the end of the nineteenth century, it evokes life under a system of massively cruel anti-Semitism. The word “landsmen” in Yiddish means people from the same place, but in this novel it conveys the larger meaning of “brothers”—in suffering, in faith, in humanity.
Peter Martin wrote the novel from the memories of the old people he knew as a boy in Brooklyn. The result is a work of fiction that is rich in a sense of time and place. The effect is bardic. Each section of the novel is narrated by one of nine characters: Yeersel, the tailor; Maisha, the religion teacher; Laib, the musician; Shim, his brother; Nochim, the dairyman; Berel, the watercarrier; Laib-Shmul, the butcher; Tzippe-Sora, the distiller; and Mottel, the outcast. Some migrated to America; some died in Golinsk.
First published in 1952, The Landsmen was the first volume of a projected trilogy, and was written to establish a sense of Jewish identity as the background for a large fictional examination of Jewish-American life. Although The Landsmen was well received and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, it was never republished. The second volume of the trilogy, The Building, appeared in 1960. Peter Martin died in 1961. [Southern Illinois University Press]
The last novel Ernest Hemingway saw published,
The Old Man and the Sea has proved itself to be one of the enduring works of American fiction. It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.
The last novel Ernest Hemingway saw published, The Old Man and the Sea has proved itself to be one of the enduring works of American fiction. It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Using the simple, powerful language of a fable, Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of defeat and personal triumph won from loss and transforms them into a magnificent twentieth-century classic. [Scribner]
The Gathering Darkness was Gallagher’s first novel.
The Gathering Darkness was Gallagher’s first novel.
A stirring, provocative novel of the American Northwest in the 1920s, written with the same buoyant vigor, the sharp characterization, and the pungent wisdom that captivated readers of H.L. Davis’ great Pulitzer Prize winning novel,
Honey In The Horn.
A stirring, provocative novel of the American Northwest in the 1920s, written with the same buoyant vigor, the sharp characterization, and the pungent wisdom that captivated readers of H.L. Davis’ great Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Honey In The Horn
H.L. Davis’ captivating novel is narrated by Amos Clarke who recounts back to thirty years when he was barely twenty and was a hot-headed young sheriff’s assistant. For Amos, it is one experience that stands out the most for him during his time spent as a sheriff’s deputy.
While delivering a summons, Amos stumbles upon a shooting that at first appears to be accidental. Busick, a ranch hand, has killed an old Indian. Amos takes Busick into custody. An open-and-shut case of manslaughter, Busick is tried and gets off. But when Busick decides to give up his rights to a small patch of grazing land, the sheriff instructs Amos to round up Busick’s horses and lead them up to public pasture with the help of Hendricks, an old man who was looking after them.
As Amos and Hendricks head north with the horses, they find themselves on the hunt for a murderer when a wealthy rancher who was married to one of Hendricks’ daughters is shot dead. Their search for a killer proves to be an epiphany for both men—and for Amos, this fascinating journey will forever change him. [William Morrow]
The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of “the Brotherhood”, and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.
Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of “the Brotherhood”, and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky. [Vintage]
Invisible Man is the only novel Ralph Ellison published during his lifetime.
