基本信息出版社：New Amsterdam Books
页码：215 页
出版日期：1991年01月
ISBN：1561310042
条形码：9781561310043
版本：1991-01-01
装帧：精装
开本：32开 Pages Per Sheet
外文书名：蜕变与机遇
内容简介 Book Description
Psychologically acute without cant or dogma, Stanley Middleton puts before us another episode of a Human Comedy controlled and measured a la Trollope.
From Publishers Weekly
English novelist Middleton's ( Vacant Places ) tart sexual comedy of manners is a brisk roundelay of deceptions, disclosures and evasions. Adrian Hillier, a cultured, depressive millionaire, is involved in a schizoid relationship with his housekeeper, ex-teacher Elsie Mead. When not making passionate love, they resume their formal roles as employer and employed. A charming, self-centered manipulator, Adrian also has designs on Alice Fowler, a woman he seduced 22 years ago in college. But Alice, now married to a manager of a supermarket (one of a chain in which Adrian is a major shareholder), resists his advances. Completing the cast are Stephen Youlgrave, a gallant septuagenarian poet who proposed marriage to Elsie; Adrian's French ex-wife; and Alice's snoopy teenage son, who sees through adult facades. A comic equation unfolds: Alice and Elsie, who are friends, conceal their romantic ties to Adrian from each other, and he too conceals his dual involvement. The ironic finale includes a twist that jolts Adrian back into life. Middleton's characters engage the reader with their cultivated chitchat and burning intensities.
From Kirkus Reviews
Middleton, author of some 30 novels, here offers a sturdy, penetrating study of a man who ``doesn't seem to consider consequences'' and of the women who surround him, notably his housekeeper/lover. Adrian Hillier, a ne'er-do-well who inherited a fortune and now patronizes the arts, especially a small theater, finds what pleasure he can in casual affairs. His housekeeper, Elsie Mead, also his lover, ``prepared herself every morning, unconsciously, for her employer's assault.'' Then Hillier hires teenager Peter Fowler--the son, it turns out, of Alice Fowler, Hillier's former lover, who's now married to a man fretting over a long-promised promotion by Top Fare, a grocery chain where Hillier has connections. On that framework, Middleton builds a stately comedy of manners. Hillier unsuccessfully puts the moves on Alice, who in turn becomes good friends with Mrs. Mead (``I regret nearly all my life''). And things begin to fall apart for Hillier: ``His'' theater decides to abandon classical drama for popular farce and musicals, whereupon Hillier resigns and takes sick; Elsie meets poet Stephen Youlgrave, who takes to Elsie, many years his junior, and proposes; Elsie, whose first husband was an older man and a suicide, accepts and--now promised though still Hillier's housekeeper--refuses Hillier's advances. Meanwhile, Alice works on Hillier until he helps her husband attain the promised promotion. By the wedding scene and its denouement, everyone ends up relatively happy, even Hillier: ``There are always women. That keeps me from despair.'' Vintage workaday Middleton, neither surprising nor spectacular, but carefully built and realized--a book that also manages, via poet Youlgrave, to speculate at length on the uses of art: ``...poetry has more than a straightforward commercial exchange in view.''
Book Dimension
Height (mm) 221 Width (mm) 148
作者简介 Stanley Middleton , author of some 30 novels, and winner of the Booker Prize.