Summer Will Show (New York Review Books Classics)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.15 (590 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1590173163 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-07-29 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Sophia flees to Paris, where she enters a relationship with her husband's mistress, a woman raised in czarist Russia. Both of her young children die of smallpox. It's almost as bad as leaving Jane Austne out of a roundup of early 19th-century British novelists." –The New York Times Book Review"Her novels, short stories, poems--and now letters--are the work of a minor artist, but an artist blessed with a poised, felicitous command of language and the ability to portray both the ordinary and the odd with charming, compassionate wit." –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times"The unifying elements in her work were always a c
She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2006. . Her many books include Mr. Fortune’s Maggot and Lolly Willows (both published by NYRB Classics), The Corner that Held Them, and Kingdoms of Elfin.Claire Harman’s first book, a biography of Sylvia Townsend Warner, was published in 1989 and won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893–1978) was a poet, short-story
Revolution from the Inside I can't speak for everyone else, of course, but to me Sylvia Townsend Warner is a bit of a surprise. She doesn't seem to be very much read these days, and in many respects she'd be perfect for today's audiences. She had some profound political wisdom, she never did the same thing twice, and she was one of the earliest writers in English to examine gay themes and content on a regular basis. So get wit. Sandra Taylor said Puzzling, but with strengths. I found this book interesting, but also disappointing and hard to get through. Warner's writing style often left me wondering just where the characters were/what was happening, etc. It's possible I need to give it a year's rest, then read it again!Sophia Willoughby's transformation from prim, upright Tory mansion-keeper, wronged wife and tragic mother (both her children die of tuberculosis) into pove. The Unexpected Jay Dickson NYRB's reissue of one of Sylvia Townsend Warner's greatest novels could not be more welcome. Written after her conversion to communism the year before, Townsend Warner's 1936 novel is her most romantic, and shows the pleasures of abandoning yourself both to another heart and to a larger political cause (and indeed the two are often conflated in the novel). SUMMER WILL SHOW is not as formally innovati
Then tragedy strikes: the children die, and Sophia, in despair, finds her way to Paris, arriving just in time for the revolution of 1848. Sophia Willoughby, a young Englishwoman from an aristocratic family and a person of strong opinions and even stronger will, has packed her cheating husband off to Paris. He can have his tawdry mistress. She intends to devote herself to the serious business of raising her two children in proper Tory fashion. Before long she has formed the unlikeliest of close relations with Minna, her husband’s sometime mistress, whose dramatic recitations, based on her hair-raising childhood in czarist Russia, electrify audiences in drawing rooms and on the street alike. Minna, “magnanimous and unscrupulous, fickle, ardent, and interfering,” leads Sophia on a wild adventure through bohemian and revolutionary Paris, in a story that reaches an unforgettable conclusion amidst the bullets, bloodshed, and hope of the barricades.Sylvia Townsend Warner was one of the most original and inventive of twentieth-century English novelists. At once an adventure story, a love story, and a novel of ideas, Summer Will Show is a brilliant rei