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In these four brilliant short novels set in America, England and Paris, Rebecca West explores the lives and relationships of rich women and men who are ruled by 'the harsh voice we hear when money talks, or hate'. There is Josie, a flower of American girlhood whose boundless ambition for wealth fatally loosens the bonds of her marriage to Corrie. There is Etienne de Sevenac, a dilettante French aristocrat whose courtly stratagems are no match for Nancy Sarle - a plain but powerful American businesswoman. There is Alice Pemberton, a sensible Englishwoman - the very salt of the earth - but a petty tyrant in her gracious Georgian home. And lastly there is Sam Hartley, an American businessman who has fought his way to riches with his wife at his side, but whose life is now haunted by an abiding vision of beautiful young women.… (más)
The first two (Life Sentence and There is No Conversation) centers on women of the 1920s and 30s who are financially astute and independent, and their turbulent and confusing relationships with the men in their life. They're written with deep psychological understanding on how resentments and misunderstandings build and are held over the course of a relationship. And their endings sucker-punched me in such a good way and forced me to immediately reevaluate each story.
The latter two stories (The Salt of the Earth and The Abiding Vision) are fantastic exercises in crafting a frustratingly believable self-unaware antagonist. In fact, TSotE may have even been done too well, that's how much I was aggravated by the character. TAV on the other hand had me roll my eyes in the predictability of the male character.
If I had to rank the stories from best to last, it'd be the same as their order in this collection, which I think was also the perfect arrangement for this collection. ( )
Rebecca West has produced four miniature novels, or long short stories, which are chiefly remarkable for their technical brilliance. . . Only a very good craftsman could have written "The Harsh Voice," but its brittleness and its occasional meretriciousness seem to prove that something besides craftsmanship is required.
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Speaks the harsh voice We hear when money talks, or hate, Then comes the softest answer. RICHARD WYNNE ERRINGTON
Dedicatoria
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
To George T. Bye
Primeras palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
One evening a year or two before the war, when most people still took it for granted that the overwhelming tragedies of life related to the private affairs of individuals, a very pale young man crossed the lawn of a large house in Montarac City and stopped dead when he came near enough to see that on the porch was standing a young woman who was far from pale. (Life Sentence)
'The two chief ills of life … are the loss of love or the approach of death' wrote Rebecca West in 1934, sounding a darker note in her generally lighthearted commentary to Low's illustrations of The Modern 'Rake's Progress'.
Citas
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
'That's what's wrong with us!' he exclaimed, getting up and walking about the room. 'We can't talk. Nobody but writers knows how to put things into words, and everybody goes around stuffed up with things they want to say and can't.' It seemed to him that he had put his fingers on the secret of all human sorrow. (From: Life Sentence, The Albatross edition 1935, p. 35)
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
He sighed deeply; and there flashed before him, as real and pricking as if he were watching a naked girl dance in a cabaret, the vision of a face unlined with care, a body still smooth and shining, undepleted by self-sacrifice, restorative with youth. (The Abiding Vision)
Perhaps finally, however, the stories are most remarkable, and indeed satisfying, for the sheer technical skill of the writing, for the strength of Rebecca West's authorial voice, as H. G. Wells put it, 'the MASTERY of these stories'. (Introduction)
In these four brilliant short novels set in America, England and Paris, Rebecca West explores the lives and relationships of rich women and men who are ruled by 'the harsh voice we hear when money talks, or hate'. There is Josie, a flower of American girlhood whose boundless ambition for wealth fatally loosens the bonds of her marriage to Corrie. There is Etienne de Sevenac, a dilettante French aristocrat whose courtly stratagems are no match for Nancy Sarle - a plain but powerful American businesswoman. There is Alice Pemberton, a sensible Englishwoman - the very salt of the earth - but a petty tyrant in her gracious Georgian home. And lastly there is Sam Hartley, an American businessman who has fought his way to riches with his wife at his side, but whose life is now haunted by an abiding vision of beautiful young women.
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The first two (Life Sentence and There is No Conversation) centers on women of the 1920s and 30s who are financially astute and independent, and their turbulent and confusing relationships with the men in their life. They're written with deep psychological understanding on how resentments and misunderstandings build and are held over the course of a relationship. And their endings sucker-punched me in such a good way and forced me to immediately reevaluate each story.
The latter two stories (The Salt of the Earth and The Abiding Vision) are fantastic exercises in crafting a frustratingly believable self-unaware antagonist. In fact, TSotE may have even been done too well, that's how much I was aggravated by the character. TAV on the other hand had me roll my eyes in the predictability of the male character.
If I had to rank the stories from best to last, it'd be the same as their order in this collection, which I think was also the perfect arrangement for this collection. (