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Cargando... Time After Time (1983)por Molly Keane
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Time After Time is a quirky story of four siblings: Jasper and his sisters April, May, and June, all elderly and living together in their family home in Ireland. April, the oldest, is the only one who ever married, and at 74 has long been widowed. Jasper is the family cook and gardener, taking great pride in the fruits of his labor. June is a horsewoman and tends to the animals on the estate, and May is a self-styled horticulturist, president of the local garden society. Each of them also has some sort of physical affliction: Jasper lost an eye as a child; May has a deformed hand. Suddenly into their lives comes Leda, a cousin who spent the summer with them once in their childhood. Leda is now blind, which means she can only imagine her cousins as they looked many years ago. They play up to that, even as they cattily acknowledge Leda has not aged gracefully. At first the visit seems amiable, but gradually we see Leda is there on a vindictive mission. This setup had potential, but the characters did not seem genuine to me and at some point I stopped caring much about how the central conflict would be resolved. It's not a bad book, but it's not Molly Keane's best. I'm not sure exactly what to make of this book, a rather dark comedy centered around decaying Irish gentility. The four elderly Swift siblings--Jasper and his fluffily named sisters, April, May, and June--live rather uncomfortably together, doomed by their domineering Mummy's will to share the decrepit family estate. Baiting one another seems to be their primary form of entertainment. Each has a particular handicap and a particular domain. Jasper, who lost an eye as a child due to Baby June's carelessness, rules in the kitchen and tends to his horticultural pursuits, often accompanied by Anselm, a lovely young monk. April, the only married Swift, now a widow, is deaf and spends her time coddling her dog and pursuing new health and beauty regimens. May, whose hand is deformed, presides over the local flower arranging club and restores Victorian doodads. And June, who didn't receive much of an education, lives for her smelly dog Tiny, her horse, and her pregnant pig. When their Jewish cousin Leda--who they thought had been killed in the Holocaust arrives on their doorstep, unexpectedly blind, the Swifts' world is thrown into chaos. Leda, it seems, is looking for a permanent residence; but she has revenge in mind. This is the first novel by Molly Keane that I've read, and I have several others on my shelves. I will surely give them a chance. Although I can't say that I loved Time After Time, it had it's moments and kept me interested overall. In Time After Time Molly Keane extends an invitation to an Irish country house. It’s an invitation that I am very glad that I accepted. The house was once beautiful, but it has fallen upon hard times. The kitchen still offers a welcome, but the cooks and kitchen maids who brought it to life have long since departed, and even the Aga is losing the will to go on. The kitchen is Jasper’s domain. Well actually the whole house and estate is his, but he has to share it with his three elderly sisters. One widow and two spinsters, all left a right of residence by darling Mummie, whose wishes none of her children would ever question. He’s an aesthete and a dreamer, and he’s also bright enough to know that whoever rules the kitchen rules the house. Well they would if they didn’t have to contend with his sisters. April, the only one to have married, is now widowed, and in her mind that places her way above her siblings. But her husband is long gone and now her life centres around her clothes, her beauty treatments, and her home comforts… May’s life is filled with domestic arts. She is president of the Flower Arrangers’ Guild for year, she is a dab hand at making pictures from scraps of tweed, wool and sprigs of heather… And Baby June is the practical one, managing the farm, always outside, always with something important to do… Each of the Swifts has a cross to bear: Jasper lost an eye, April is stone deaf, May has a deformed hand, and Baby June, well Baby June is rather slow… And each of them tries to fill their lives with the important things they do, with possession, with the cats and dogs who are so cosseted in the absence of children. They live together, bickering like children because they are unhappy with their lives. The portraits that Molly Keane paints of the Swift siblings as they move through their lives are so rich, so vivid and so wonderfully detailed. Grotesques. Realism. Comedy. Tragedy. Only Molly Keane can balance all of those elements to such fine effect. I laughed, I cried, and I wanted to scream at them to admit that they were unhappy, that there lives didn’t have to be ruled by what their mother had thought in a different age, that they could change their lives. But I knew that they wouldn’t have listened, and that even if they had they wouldn’t have believed me. The pictures change when cousin Leda comes to visit. As a child she was that little bit different, and the Swifts didn’t know quite how to react. To pay court or to close ranks. And it is just the same now that Leda is a widow and has lost her sight. How like children they all are. Leda says things, does things, crosses lines that the Swifts never would. And of course there are consequences. When finally she leaves they realise that life will never be the same again. It’s still comic, it’s still tragic, it’s still grotesque, and it’s still real. Now that I have left too I miss the whole household. As is so often the case with Molly Keane’s creations, I really wouldn’t want to meet them but they are quite wonderful to observe. A wonderful entertainment! The four Swift siblings live together in their crumbling Irish manor house. Each has a disability he or she must compensate for, and each take turns insulting and belittling the others and revenging both past and present slights. Then the long lost cousin arrives to be waited upon and gather the secrets of the Swifts so that she can reveal them in the most appalling manor. This is a book about nasty people being nasty to each other. The only good thing about it is that in the end they all get theirs. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Pertenece a las series editorialesVirago Modern Classics (475)
Durraghglass is a beautiful mansion in Southern Ireland, now crumbling in neglect. The time is the present - a present that churns with the bizarre passions of its owners' past. The Swifts - three sisters of marked eccentricity, defiantly christened April, May and Baby June, and their only brother, one-eyed Jasper - have little in common, save vivid memories of darling Mummy, and a long lost youth peculiarly prone to acts of treachery. Into their world comes Cousin Leda from Vienna, a visitor from the past, blind but beguiling - a thrilling guest. But within days, the lifestyle of the Swifts has been dramatically overturned - and desires, dormant for so long, flame fierce and bright as ever. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)823.912Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1901-1945Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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I enjoyed reading this curious tale. None of the characters are particularly likeable and the tensions, resentments and minor acts of cruelty between the family members are excellently portrayed. The darkness is leavened by comedy and a lightness of style that makes it easy reading. ( )