Patrick White
Genre: novel
First published: 1973
Pages: 557
Language: Czech
Rating: 4/5
Synopsis
Elizabeth Hunter, an ex-socialite in her eighties, has a mystical experience during a summer storm in Sydney, which transforms all her relationships: her existence becomes charged with a meaning, which communicates itself to those around her.
When I started reading this book, I was confused about my feelings towards it. It was strangely fascinating and not at all what I expected. I'm not surprised that White was awarded with the Nobel prize.
The story is about an old woman, Elizabeth Hunter, who's on her death bed and still somehow maintains her strange kind of cruelty - and she keeps ruling with an iron fist. In the book we meet multiple people surrounding Elizabeth and we enter their minds along the way. We get to know their thoughts and their pasts. Patrick White is a master of the psychology of his characters and the analysis of their relationships. I didn't really like any of the characters, but I did find myself really drawn to their story and the book as a whole.
How could I not enjoy it? There's Elizabeth, a snob on her death bed who's "leaving" her current state of mind to travel to the past - probably the only thing she has left. We discover a lot about her on the pages of this book. She's an interesting character. She's old and her children, who themselves aren't really sure if they love or hate her, are trying to put her into a home for elderly people.
Her daughter, Dorothy, is unhappy with her marriage (and cannot get divorced because of the Church). She's childless and somehow too consumed with her platonic adulteries. It also seemed to me that she kind of lives in her mother's shadow when it comes to men - and she despises her for that.
Elizabeth's son, sir Basil, an actor who only ever reads plays - and only if he's got a good role in them - , has a strong feeling towards towards his birth-house, where his father lived and died. In the novel, we follow him and his older sister back to this place and we see a bit more of his past, and we get to see a little more of a "battle" that was going on between Elizabeth and Alfred (Bill) Hunter; parents who are competing for their son's love. With Basil there's one more thing to be connected - his role of King Lear. It's being talked about many times during the book and it has a special meaning for him.
Then there's Flora Manhood, a nurse, who's unsure about her love life and is a bit obsessed with having a child. We also meet other nurses - de Santis and Badgery, a Jewish housekeeper Lottie Lippman or a lawyer, Mr Wyburd. Not all of them are given an equal amount of space in the novel, but we still get enough information to picture them as real characters with their passions and vices and virtues. Throughout the book we discover their backstories and that helps us understand them a little bit. The psychology of the main characters is flawless and thought through from A to Z.
I really enjoyed the writing, the usage of metaphors and the flowery descriptions. There was a thing that was testing me a little bit before I got used to it, though - grammatically dubious and disjointed paragraphs without punctuation referring to (probably) streams of consciousness. Then, however, I started really enjoying those. They were like windows into the souls of the characters, full of subconscious associations (do you know what automatism is? surrealists use that to write; those paragraphs reminded me of that).
Well, I enjoyed the book as a whole. It was something different, I've never read a book like that before, and it was a good different. I definitely highly recommend it.
The story is about an old woman, Elizabeth Hunter, who's on her death bed and still somehow maintains her strange kind of cruelty - and she keeps ruling with an iron fist. In the book we meet multiple people surrounding Elizabeth and we enter their minds along the way. We get to know their thoughts and their pasts. Patrick White is a master of the psychology of his characters and the analysis of their relationships. I didn't really like any of the characters, but I did find myself really drawn to their story and the book as a whole.
Her daughter, Dorothy, is unhappy with her marriage (and cannot get divorced because of the Church). She's childless and somehow too consumed with her platonic adulteries. It also seemed to me that she kind of lives in her mother's shadow when it comes to men - and she despises her for that.
Elizabeth's son, sir Basil, an actor who only ever reads plays - and only if he's got a good role in them - , has a strong feeling towards towards his birth-house, where his father lived and died. In the novel, we follow him and his older sister back to this place and we see a bit more of his past, and we get to see a little more of a "battle" that was going on between Elizabeth and Alfred (Bill) Hunter; parents who are competing for their son's love. With Basil there's one more thing to be connected - his role of King Lear. It's being talked about many times during the book and it has a special meaning for him.
Then there's Flora Manhood, a nurse, who's unsure about her love life and is a bit obsessed with having a child. We also meet other nurses - de Santis and Badgery, a Jewish housekeeper Lottie Lippman or a lawyer, Mr Wyburd. Not all of them are given an equal amount of space in the novel, but we still get enough information to picture them as real characters with their passions and vices and virtues. Throughout the book we discover their backstories and that helps us understand them a little bit. The psychology of the main characters is flawless and thought through from A to Z.I really enjoyed the writing, the usage of metaphors and the flowery descriptions. There was a thing that was testing me a little bit before I got used to it, though - grammatically dubious and disjointed paragraphs without punctuation referring to (probably) streams of consciousness. Then, however, I started really enjoying those. They were like windows into the souls of the characters, full of subconscious associations (do you know what automatism is? surrealists use that to write; those paragraphs reminded me of that).
Well, I enjoyed the book as a whole. It was something different, I've never read a book like that before, and it was a good different. I definitely highly recommend it.
Musím říct, že tohle asi není úplně titul pro mě... To však nic nemění na tom, že Tvoje recenze je opět skvěle napsaná - opravdu, to je radost číst. :) Moc se těším na další příspěvky a přeji překrásný večer. :*)
ReplyDeleteJá to naprosto chápu. Určitě to není pro každého, je to dost zvláštní kniha. Já jsem zezačátku taky měla pocit, že to odložím, protože ty odstavce bez interpunkce na mě byly chvílema až moc. Pak mě to ale začalo hrozně bavit, protože já miluju takovou tu psychologičnost, která v tomhle díle je.
DeleteA děkuju, moc mě to těší! Krásný zbytek dne přeju. :)
Já se tedy přidávám ke Kristýnce, že tenhle titul asi nebude to pravé ořechové pro mě, nicméně Tvoje recenze (jako úplně vždycky) je dokonalá v každém bodě. Umíš fakt krásně psát :) Vyjádřit se chci taky k fotkám - ta první, to jsi stála na židli? :D a ta druhá - moc se mi líbí v pozadí ta "kolíčková nástěnka" :)
ReplyDeleteMěj se nádherně
Já ti děkuju! Fakt mě tvoje komentáře vždycky hrozně potěší.
DeleteCo se fotek týče - ne, na židli jsem nestála. Já jsem trochu dlouhán, takže mi stačilo si jen stoupnout maličko na špičky. :D A ještě jednou děkuju, taky tu "nástěnku" mám ráda, i když na ní musím ještě aspoň něco přidat, aby to nebylo tak prázdné.
Přeju krásný zbytek neděle!