PortadaGruposCharlasMásPanorama actual
Buscar en el sitio
Este sitio utiliza cookies para ofrecer nuestros servicios, mejorar el rendimiento, análisis y (si no estás registrado) publicidad. Al usar LibraryThing reconoces que has leído y comprendido nuestros términos de servicio y política de privacidad. El uso del sitio y de los servicios está sujeto a estas políticas y términos.

Resultados de Google Books

Pulse en una miniatura para ir a Google Books.

Cargando...

The Innocents (1971)

por Margery Sharp

MiembrosReseñasPopularidadValoración promediaMenciones
716371,471 (4.03)7
Margery Sharp's most poignant novel, set during World War II and filled with her trademark wit and warmth, tells the story of the powerful bond forged between a British spinster and the unusual little girl left in her care As the threat of war looms, Cecilia and Rab Guthrie leave their young daughter, Antoinette, with a spinster friend in East Anglia, England, so they can enjoy a holiday on the continent. Three-year-old Antoinette doesn't speak, is inordinately clumsy, and must always be spoken to in quiet tones or else she becomes frightened. Then the outbreak of World War II forces Antoinette's parents to return to America without their daughter.   As the years pass, a relationship grows between the unmarried, childless woman and her innocent charge. Slowly Antoinette begins to change, becoming less frightened and delighting in objects and words, as does her foster mother. But when the war is over, Cecilia comes to collect her daughter--and take her away from the only person who has every really understood her.   An insightful, unsentimental novel about the challenges of raising a mentally challenged child in 1940s England, The Innocents sweeps readers along to its shocking conclusion.  … (más)
Ninguno
Cargando...

Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará.

Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.

» Ver también 7 menciones

Mostrando 1-5 de 6 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
An absolute stinker; that from a Sharp fan.

What makes her books so wonderful is there sharpness and this is about as sharp as something really REALLY blunt.

But yes. Definitely one for the 'better written than Harry Potter' shelf.

( )
  bringbackbooks | Jun 16, 2020 |
My desert island book. ( )
  helenmoran | Mar 4, 2019 |
Very compulsive reading, narrated by an elderly village spinster, and set in the 1940s. She recalls local lovely Cecilia and her marriage to an American. On a trip back to Europe with their 3 year old daughter, the narrator agrees to mind her for a month...then the War breaks out and somehow little Antoinette remains in her care for the next five years.
The child is severely retarded, barely speaking and behaving in erratic and inexplicable ways, and yet a great bond develops, the predictable, calm lifestyle suiting Antoinette. And then her glamorous socialite mother returns to reclaim her...
Wonderful writing; although the narrator's words are cautious, we feel we understand her personality completely. ( )
  starbox | Nov 23, 2018 |
I have loved many of Margery Sharp’s books for many different reasons and, though I could argue with myself for a long time over the question, I think that if I had to pick just one favourite, one book to take with me to a desert island, it would be ‘The Innocents’.

I read it twice and each time I didn’t write about it, because I wasn’t sure that I could find the words to do it justice. And now I’ve read it for a third time, and I know that I must start to write.

It’s a later work, it’s a quieter and simpler work than many of her others, and it speaks so profoundly.

The story is told by a middle-aged – almost elderly spinster living in a quiet country village. She had lived there all her life, first as the only child of the vicarage, and then as a lady of independent means. She was content with her life and with her position in village society; not at the forefront but always with a role to play.

Margery Sharp drew her character so well, and all of the characters who had parts to play in the story she has to tell. She had the ability to draw a real, living, breathing person with just a few lines, and in this case an account of a particular village fete. I can’t explain them nearly so well and so I shan’t even try. You need to read this book, and somebody needs to reissue it, please.

What she didn’t do was tell me her narrator’s name, and so I must continue to refer to her as ‘she’.

She recalled a visit from friends in the summer of 1939. A younger friend, who had been the belle of the village, had a whirlwind romance with an older Scottish businessman and they had settled in the USA. They had come home for business reasons, with their infant daughter in tow, and they had plans to tour continental Europe before they travelled back across the Atlantic. They realised that it had been a mistake to bring a young child without her nanny, and they wondered if could leave her, safe in the care of their older friend, while they holidayed.

She was pleased to say yes, she was quite taken with the child, and arrangements were quickly put into place.

She had already recognised what the parents had left unsaid: the child – Antoinette – Toni – had learning difficulties, or, in her own preferred terminology, she was ‘an innocent.’

This was when the story really struck a chord with me; because I had a brother who was ‘an innocent’. And that is why it means a great deal for me to say that everything rang true, that it was emotionally honest without ever being sentimental, and that ….

It made me think of many of the lovely people I met who were involved in my brother’s care, and it made me think of my mother and wish that I had discovered that book when my mother would have still been able to read it.

Now, back to the story.

Toni was blessed with a guardian who took such good care of her. She borrowed a basket of tabby kittens in case a distraction was needed when the parents left; it wasn’t, but Toni loved them anyway. She borrowed a cot from the WI and she took great care to understand what made her charge happy. What she loved was to spend her days wandering in the garden, to come into the house to eat when she was hungry, and to sleep securely in her cot at night. And so that was what happened.

A lovely understanding grew between the two. Toni had only a small number of words, and she used them to express herself rather than applying their conventional meaning; but of course true understanding doesn’t need words.

This arrangement lasted for much longer than had been originally planned. Because Britain declared war on Germany before that holiday was over, and an anxious employer arranged flights back to the USA, post haste. There was no time to collect Toni, and so she stayed just where she was until the war was over.

Her guardian learned, as more arrangements were put in place, that Toni’s father understood her condition and its implications, that he was anxious to do whatever was best for her; and that her mother did not, that she thought that counselling and speech therapy would transform Toni into the model daughter to follow her into society.

Toni’s father died just before the end of the war, and her mother arrived to take her home. She didn’t understand her child; she could not – or maybe would not – Margery Sharp is far to clever a writer to let me decide which, but she made me care so much.

The way that the story played out then was heart-rending. The guardian persuaded the mother to stay a while, to help the child’s transition; she wished to do more but she knew she could not; The child was unhappy, she tried to cling to the secure world she knew and loved, but it was clear that at some level she knew that she could; and the mother’s presence, living in a world where she no longer really belonged, sent ripples through the village community.

The conclusion is dramatic, and it could be interpreted in more than one way. I can’t quite decide; but I can tell you that thinking about it brings a lump to my throat.

Margery Sharp was such a perceptive writer; she understood all of her characters so well, and she knew that there were no heroes and no villains, just fallible human beings, some wiser than others.

Even though I knew this story it held me, it had my heart rising and falling, from the first page to the last.

I can’t do it justice, but I can say that it really is a gem. ( )
  BeyondEdenRock | May 11, 2016 |
An elderly spinster and a young, mentally retarded girl are thrown together by circumstance, and their complicated but loving relationship of years is suddenly threatened by the return of the child's oblivious and selfish mother.

Another most unusual novel by master writer Sharp, and one of my personal favourites of her many excellent works. ( )
  leavesandpages | Mar 4, 2013 |
Mostrando 1-5 de 6 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Debes iniciar sesión para editar los datos de Conocimiento Común.
Para más ayuda, consulta la página de ayuda de Conocimiento Común.
Título canónico
Información procedente del Conocimiento común alemán. Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Título original
Títulos alternativos
Fecha de publicación original
Personas/Personajes
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés. Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Lugares importantes
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés. Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Acontecimientos importantes
Películas relacionadas
Epígrafe
Dedicatoria
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés. Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
To Geoffrey Castle
Primeras palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés. Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
My father was a connoisseur of wine; but times and incomes change and we with them, and now I am a connoisseur of weather.
Citas
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés. Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Aviso de desambiguación
Editores de la editorial
Blurbistas
Idioma original
DDC/MDS Canónico
LCC canónico

Referencias a esta obra en fuentes externas.

Wikipedia en inglés

Ninguno

Margery Sharp's most poignant novel, set during World War II and filled with her trademark wit and warmth, tells the story of the powerful bond forged between a British spinster and the unusual little girl left in her care As the threat of war looms, Cecilia and Rab Guthrie leave their young daughter, Antoinette, with a spinster friend in East Anglia, England, so they can enjoy a holiday on the continent. Three-year-old Antoinette doesn't speak, is inordinately clumsy, and must always be spoken to in quiet tones or else she becomes frightened. Then the outbreak of World War II forces Antoinette's parents to return to America without their daughter.   As the years pass, a relationship grows between the unmarried, childless woman and her innocent charge. Slowly Antoinette begins to change, becoming less frightened and delighting in objects and words, as does her foster mother. But when the war is over, Cecilia comes to collect her daughter--and take her away from the only person who has every really understood her.   An insightful, unsentimental novel about the challenges of raising a mentally challenged child in 1940s England, The Innocents sweeps readers along to its shocking conclusion.  

No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca.

Descripción del libro
Resumen Haiku

Debates activos

Ninguno

Cubiertas populares

Enlaces rápidos

Valoración

Promedio: (4.03)
0.5
1 1
1.5
2
2.5
3 2
3.5 2
4 6
4.5 1
5 6

¿Eres tú?

Conviértete en un Autor de LibraryThing.

 

Acerca de | Contactar | LibraryThing.com | Privacidad/Condiciones | Ayuda/Preguntas frecuentes | Blog | Tienda | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliotecas heredadas | Primeros reseñadores | Conocimiento común | 203,227,225 libros! | Barra superior: Siempre visible