Overlooked

by Maurice Baring

Anthony Kay, a blind man, meets a gathering of people and quickly becomes involved in their lives. One of them is novelist James Rudd, who decides to study and write about the characters around him. The story he ends up with is very different to the one Kay would have told …. Maurice Baring skillfully blends the objective and subjective, questioning the concept of sight in a portrait of characters whose lives are destined to be intertwined. As with crime incidents in the modern era, witnesses may see the same things, but their interpretation and recall can be very different.

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2001

About the author

Maurice Baring OBE (27 April 1874 – 14 December 1945) was an English man of letters, known as a dramatist, poet, novelist, translator and essayist, and also as a travel writer and war correspondent, with particular knowledge of Russia. During World War I, Baring served in the Intelligence Corps and Royal Air Force.

Reviews

[Erich C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthony Kay, universal confidante, weaves together the larger story from the facts and opinions he gathers from the other guests at Hareville: Princess Kouragne, the widow of a Russian prince; Mrs. Lennox, the "ruthlessly selfish" aunt of Jean Brandon, 30-year-old almost-spinster of whom it is said that "there is a lamp inside her which has gone out;" Mabel Summer, the older friend of Jean; Kranitski, Jean's conflicted "friend;" Canning, Jean's once-too-poor first love who is since reported to be "devoted" to the beautiful Dona Maria Alberti; and James Rudd, a middlebrow novelist.

James Rudd is inspired to novelize the company, and Kay reproduces the resulting story (Overlooked). When compared with the "truth" of the other characters as Kay has sketched them in his own papers, the story shows how "wide of the mark" and "fantastically wrong" Rudd has been in his interpretation of character and motive. Of course, Rudd has made the novelist character in Overlooked a wonderfully perceptive person with a deep understanding of human nature.

Although the central conflict in the book (understanding the context of Kranitski's decision to leave) is slight, the method is interesting and suggests larger themes related to solipsism, the inner logic of unseen motivations, and the nature of truth.