Vincent Levesque has grown to adulthood believing himself to be an illegitimate orphan, raised in kindness by adoptive parents in Belgium, and educated well through an anonymous "scholarship". At the end of WW II, having been abandoned by his wife, he discovers the truth about his parentage.Originally published in Great Britain as "Image of My Father"Library of Congress 61-17568
Ray Coryton Hutchinson was a best-selling British novelist. His 1975 novel Rising was short-listed for the Booker Prize.
He was born in Finchley, Middlesex and educated at Monkton Combe School, near Bath. He received his BA at Oriel College, Oxford in 1927 and joined the advertising department at Colman's in Norwich. He married Margaret Owen Jones in April 1929.
His first novel, Thou Hast a Devil, was published in 1930. It was followed by The Answering Glory (1932), and The Unforgotten Prisoner (1933), which sold 150,000 copies in the first month. Subsequent novels also sold very well and in 1935 he left Colman's to begin writing full-time.
In March 1940 he joined the army, and in July was posted as captain in the 8th Battalion of the Buffs Regiment. He travelled widely during the war, while continuing to write. In October 1945, after preparing the official history of the Paiforce campaign, he was demobilized with the rank of Major.
After the war he wrote many more successful novels, often recommended by book clubs. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in June 1962.
He died before completing the last chapter of his novel, Rising (1975). It was published in September of the same year and short-listed for the Booker Prize in November.
His published work comprises 17 novels and 28 short stories, as well as one play, Last Train South (1938).
This was one of Hutchinson's most difficult books to read. And yet it had some memorable characters and passages. "Love, it isn't something which comes, something you wait for. It's an activity, what you do, a thing you create. God has made no one who cannot be loved. And if he had, it would still be for us to make ourselves love them"