Recently Released
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Recently Caught
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Social Links
Bookish Quotes
"I always thought the joy of reading a book is not knowing what happens next."
The Witch of Exmoor
|
The Witch of Exmoor
Buy from one of these Booksellers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
3 journalers for this copy...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Trade paperback RABCK from BlueAmazon in Long Beach, California, USA. She included it with a trade.From Library Journal Freda Haxby Palmer, author of the feminist classic The Matriarchy of War, was always more popular with her readers than with her own children. Her three offspring, now married and middle-aged, lead respectable lives, but Freda's behavior has gone from bad to worse. She lives like a hippie in a rundown seaside retreat in Exmoor. Her most recent book, a romance novel based on the life of Queen Christina, was universally panned. Lately, she has taken on the British tax code in the courts. But when Freda turns up missing, her estate suddenly seems more desirable. A movie producer has optioned her romance novel, and a sizable fortune may go to David D'Anger, M.P., her black son-in-law, to finance his utopian dream of creating a truly just society, an idea that makes the rest of the family cringe. This novel reexamines one of Drabble's favorite themes, the extent to which political idealism is a luxury of the privileged classes. This combination soap opera/novel of ideas, peppered with daunting Briticisms, is recommended for most Anglophile fiction collections. From Booklist It's been five years since Drabble's last novel, The Gates of Ivory, and she is at her sorceress' best spinning this wickedly gothic tale of one family's folly and tragedy. The witch of Exmoor is Frieda Haxby Palmer, a writer, "social analyst, prophet, sage and sybil," reluctant matriarch, and determined lone wolf. Bored with her three self-important and ambitious children and with all but one of her five grandchildren, and irritated by the viperish reviews of her last book, a historical novel about Queen Christina, she sold the family estate and bought a great, rotting mansion perched precariously above the sea. Here Frieda resides in eccentric solitude, working fitfully on her memoirs and enjoying her scheming family's increasing discomfort and concern over her sanity and her last will and testament. Drabble's finely etched portraits of Frieda's cold-blooded son Daniel, well-armored daughters Gogo and Rosemary, and their intriguingly conflicted spouses are priceless, bright mirrors reflecting the perversity of our times and our minds. Wielding an imperially impertinent narrative style, Drabble slyly contrasts the fairy tale-like roles she has teasingly fashioned for her characters with acute social commentary, illuminating, in the process, all that has been lost in this age of toxicity and consumerism and all that has always been the scourge of our bloody species: selfishness and cruelty, greed and shortsightedness. Witty, original, and caustic, Drabble dazzles. From Kirkus Reviews A startling, mordantly funny portrait of contemporary Britain, and Drabble's (The Gates of Ivory, 1992, etc.) best and most assured novel in years. At the heart of the action is Frieda Palmer, the increasingly eccentric matriarch of an eminently successful family. Frieda has gained fame for her eloquent, prophetic works on feminism (including her children are also variously successful: Gogo is a much-in-demand neurologist, married to an up- and-coming liberal politician; Rosemary is an influential figure in arts funding; and Daniel is a quietly accomplished barrister. The three, their spouses, and their children have gathered, as the story begins, to discuss what, if anything, can be done with their intemperate mother. She has recently engaged in a buffoonish battle with the government over taxes. And she has sold the family house, and bought a rambling, shabby hotel in Exmoor, on a cliff above the sea, where she lives alone. What will she do next? What of their reputations? And what of their inheritance? Their efforts to somehow assert control over Frieda's life eventually draw in their own children (including the free-spirited Emily, Daniel's daughter, and the brilliant, somber young Ben, Gogo's son) and set in motion a variety of subplots revealing the quiet hypocrisies at the heart of many of these lives and offering, in the person of Frieda, one of the more complex and original of Drabble's creations. A zestful, angry figure, fighting age, and struggling to come to terms with the horrific secret concerning her own marriage that she has long suppressed, Frieda, often fierce, arouses exasperation and affection in equal measure. This droll riff on King Lear manages to be both an intriguing portrait of a difficult woman and a sustained lampoon on the self-absorbed, righteous behavior of the British elite, related in prose of sustained vigor. Satire and melodrama, nicely mixed, and a thoroughly satisfying entertainment. |
|
|
|
|
Released 6 yrs ago (7/11/2005 UTC) at Klekolo World Coffee, 181 Court St. (OBCZ) in Middletown, Connecticut USA WILD RELEASE NOTES:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
