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Brief Garlands
The comforts and terrors of middle-class provincial life have seldom been more sharply dissected than by Stanley Middleton, and his new novel adds to this social insight a new poignancy. As aging slowly entwines John Stone, retired headmaster at Beechnall, his wife Peg and their various friends and relatives, and as past certainties recede, the solid, decent world of provincial life with its satisfactions and occasional minor adulteries gives way to new threats - some external, in the changing society around them, some internal. The question of how to live the good life, always near the centre of Middleton's novels, confronts the inhabitants of this quiet street of Victorian villas and is answered in surprising and disturbing ways.
- GenresFiction
304 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2004
6 people want to read
About the author
Stanley Middleton
55 books17 followersStanley Middleton wrote 45 novels, including 1974's Booker Prize-winner Holiday. A Cautious Approach was his last novel.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 20, 2015
Not a long book, a little over 200 pages, but I couldn't finish. I enjoyed the first 70 pages or so, but then it simply lost momentum for me. Momentum, and credibility.
The main characters are a 70-year-old retired school principal and his wife. We are to believe, when their nephew experiences some indeterminate hiccup in his relationship, that his girlfriend would come to spend a weekend with this couple to discuss the situation.
A young woman will spend a weekend with an elderly couple she's never before met, to talk about her relationship with her boyfriend.
That strained credibility to the breaking point. The conversations which occurred amongst these three people were very careful, measured, thoughtful, almost clinical in their detachment.
When the dialogue began to feel less like conversation than interviews, I began to skip. First a paragraph or two, then a page, then a chapter. Finally I dipped in here and there, just to see if some thread of life would enter this muted tale.
It did not. Even the tabloid-worthy, suspicious death of a neighbour's mistress -- did he kill her? -- doesn't really ruffle the surface of this stale tale.
Still waters may run deep ... or they may simple be stagnant and moribund. I read every word till page 105, and then I simply ground to a halt, mired.
The main characters are a 70-year-old retired school principal and his wife. We are to believe, when their nephew experiences some indeterminate hiccup in his relationship, that his girlfriend would come to spend a weekend with this couple to discuss the situation.
A young woman will spend a weekend with an elderly couple she's never before met, to talk about her relationship with her boyfriend.
That strained credibility to the breaking point. The conversations which occurred amongst these three people were very careful, measured, thoughtful, almost clinical in their detachment.
When the dialogue began to feel less like conversation than interviews, I began to skip. First a paragraph or two, then a page, then a chapter. Finally I dipped in here and there, just to see if some thread of life would enter this muted tale.
It did not. Even the tabloid-worthy, suspicious death of a neighbour's mistress -- did he kill her? -- doesn't really ruffle the surface of this stale tale.
Still waters may run deep ... or they may simple be stagnant and moribund. I read every word till page 105, and then I simply ground to a halt, mired.
February 14, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews