Peter RushforthReseñas

I abandoned the effort at page 88/729, and consider myself lucky to have graduated to such a point, where I don't feel guilty about stopping, and will not be forcing myself to slog through 600-odd more pages of this.
If you like listening to the feverish imaginings of someone who is very erudite and nursing a lot of hatred, you may enjoy this book. The writing is perhaps very fine, and the scholarly background is probably even better, but I didn't enjoy _reading_ it, so I'm giving it a pass.

a charming book½

Peter Rushforth’s first novel, Kindergarten, was published in 1979 to great acclaim. Twenty-five years later he returned to thrill us all with the epic novel Pinkerton’s Sister, which was an outstanding book about the day in the life of Alice, a madwoman who lived in her wealthy family’s attic.

In 2005 Rushforth finished A Dead Language, which is the sequel to Pinkerton’s Sister. In fact, it was to be the second in a quintet but sadly, Rushforth passed away whilst walking the Yorkshire Moors with some friends. Dead Language is about Alice’s brother, Ben, and his story skips back and forth between past and present with surprising ease.
We read a bout Ben’s harrowing journey through adolescence into manhood, and how his father torments him mercilessly for being ‘as pretty as a girl’ and for blushing and being naturally musically talented.

Rushforth’s storytelling technique is extremely lavish, and he never used one word when 12 would do better! This is a book to be read slowly and each page should be savoured.

Although the author's portrayal of children isn't always that believable (they're too sensitive and literate altogether!) I loved this novel for the way it drives home the particularilty of each person's suffering as a result of events like the Holocaust or terrorism. This novel takes numbers like "six million" and tries to put a domestic, specific face on at least a dozen of them, leaving the reader to imagine that similar and different stories are attached to all of those remaining.

I also applaud the way in which the author ties together history and myth (specifically, fairy tales) and the way he experiments with varying narrative formats: the portrayal of Berlin in the 1920s and 30s in Chapter 7 is particularly vivid.

A book about books. Couldn't get into it... though I didn't give it much of a chance.

This book combines myths and fairy tales with the Holocaust in an esquisite manner. It's about 3 brothers, whose mother was killed by terrorists, and their grandmother who escaped Hilter's Germany. One of the boys discover a cache of hidden pre-war letters from Jewish parents, in which they plead for safe haven for their children. This is a short but eloquent novel, and one that deserves to be read and then read again. After writing this, Rushford didn't write again for 25 years, when he wrote Pinkerton's Sister. Unfortunately, Rushforth died suddenly of a heart attack, just as his writing career was taking off.

Pinkerton's sister is about Alice, a 35 year old, single woman, who is regarded as a madwoman and who has a stammer. She was born in 1868, the year in which the first part of Little Women had been published. Alice's life is lived inside her book-lined imagination. Her thoughts mix fact, fantasy, literature, past and present together. She tells us of the attempts that are made to cure her of her imagination and her spirit by using electrotherapy, hot and cold bath treatments, massage, hypnotism and cloud-reading. Books and authors that Alice mentions are, amongst others, The Princess and the Goblin, A Child's Garden of Verses, Tennyson, Jane Austen, the Brontës, the Brownings, Hardy, and Poe, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Woman in White, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Goblin Market and Alice in Wonderland. She makes literary connections between everyone around her by using her vast knowledge of books. This book is a fantastic achievement and a must for lovers of books about books.

Wow. What an amazing book. It's not an easy read, but well worth it. What a great commentary of society, women, children, and sex at the turn of the century!