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The Partnership
Booker Prize-winning author Barry Unsworth's first novel, published for the first time in the United States. Foley and Moss are partners in a successful small business, making plaster pixies for the tourist trade. Foley is the artistic member of the partnership; he thinks up the ideas and designs and has pretensions to even greater artistry in his cherub lamps and fixtures. Moss, the seemingly quiet one who supplied the capital for the venture, manufactures them. Barry Unsworth sets his scene magnificently―a Cornish village, Lanruan, thriving on specious tourism, and its local characters: Graham, the primitive painter; Bailey, the loud-mouthed Northerner who comes to Lanruan to make his fortune; Barbara, the nearest thing the village possesses to a bad girl; and above all Gwendoline, who, inadvertently, begins the rift in the partnership between Foley and Moss. The Partnership is a disquieting, darkly funny tale about hidden desires and the unspoken attachments we have for one another.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
2 people are currently reading
66 people want to read
About the author
Barry Unsworth
57 books190 followersBarry Unsworth was an English writer known for his historical fiction. He published 17 novels, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, winning once for the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 25, 2025
91st book read in 2025
I don’t quite remember how Barry Unsworth got onto the lists of My Big Fat Reading Project. I suspect I first heard of him when he died in 2012 and read some glowing obituaries. He was three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won for his 1992 novel Sacred Hunger. He published 17 novels, most of which were historical.
The Partnership, published in 1966, was his debut novel. For me, it suffers from a lugubrious style. Thankfully it is short, but it felt long.
Two men of widely different temperament are involved in a business partnership making plaster pixies for the tourist trade in a Cornish village on the sea. They live in a rented house but are as unlike each other as can be.
The tensions between them are the story. They are each unlikable in their own ways. Since this is the 1960s, I was mildly surprised to find that one of the partners is a closeted homosexual who “comes out” during the novel. Not that homosexuality had not featured in novels I have read from earlier years, just that I did not see it coming.
I will say that Barry Unsworth was already good with characters. I will also say that 1966 was a year of early forms of experimental writing and poring into less pleasant slices of life. The writing in this novel is traditional but the subject matter not so much.
I don’t quite remember how Barry Unsworth got onto the lists of My Big Fat Reading Project. I suspect I first heard of him when he died in 2012 and read some glowing obituaries. He was three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won for his 1992 novel Sacred Hunger. He published 17 novels, most of which were historical.
The Partnership, published in 1966, was his debut novel. For me, it suffers from a lugubrious style. Thankfully it is short, but it felt long.
Two men of widely different temperament are involved in a business partnership making plaster pixies for the tourist trade in a Cornish village on the sea. They live in a rented house but are as unlike each other as can be.
The tensions between them are the story. They are each unlikable in their own ways. Since this is the 1960s, I was mildly surprised to find that one of the partners is a closeted homosexual who “comes out” during the novel. Not that homosexuality had not featured in novels I have read from earlier years, just that I did not see it coming.
I will say that Barry Unsworth was already good with characters. I will also say that 1966 was a year of early forms of experimental writing and poring into less pleasant slices of life. The writing in this novel is traditional but the subject matter not so much.
September 9, 2012
Oh if only Barry hadn't died recently, this book could turn me into a literary stalker. It's simply stunning writing. And damp. Yes, in a moist, soggy sort of way. His central character is even called Moss, a kind of human Fungus the Bogeyman character. If this book was a stick of rock it would have dampness, decay and destruction written right through it. Besides exploring the relationship between the two main male characters - the partnership - there's an artist called Graham who is doing a painting called The Crack of Doom (a kind of Cornish apocalypse) that is hilarious. When Moss scrutinises some plants the description is beautifully nuanced:
....a creeper with glossy, denticulated leaves, gummy, hoop-shaped tendrils and tiny dark blue flowers like microscopic violets .....
that's what Barry does, he turns a microscope on life, death, relationships everything ... and it's all a bit dank
"...the fertilising and corrupting moisture, invisible droplets of it in the air all around him, breeding plants that stank, fleshing the gum-pink undersides of mushrooms on the cliffs, fattening the fungoid umbrellas in the crotches of trees, that ended as they grew and ended as malodorous puddles."
Life according to Barry can clearly end as malodorous puddles for us all. Grab a towel and dive in.
....a creeper with glossy, denticulated leaves, gummy, hoop-shaped tendrils and tiny dark blue flowers like microscopic violets .....
that's what Barry does, he turns a microscope on life, death, relationships everything ... and it's all a bit dank
"...the fertilising and corrupting moisture, invisible droplets of it in the air all around him, breeding plants that stank, fleshing the gum-pink undersides of mushrooms on the cliffs, fattening the fungoid umbrellas in the crotches of trees, that ended as they grew and ended as malodorous puddles."
Life according to Barry can clearly end as malodorous puddles for us all. Grab a towel and dive in.
November 17, 2024
What a disappointing book. The premise was interesting and there were some really good bits in in the first 80 percent or so, but the ending obliterated any of those best parts. How are you going to make a book entirely about how people often don't fit the boxes we put them in, and then shove the characters into stereotypes at the end? Moss's entire character is based in the fact that he doesn't fit into the stereotypes that are placed on people like him. This is a big point of his development and contributes to the major theme of the book. So how then are you going to reach the end of the book and turn him into an even worse stereotype than the one you were subverting? I can understand and respect having unlikable characters (I don't think any of these characters are meant to be likable), but making the most sympathetic character into a villain in the last thirty pages is going too damn far.
February 16, 2025
Archly dated (first of his books published 1966) but a fine meditation on relationships formed in silence and of misapprehensions.
January 8, 2015
Gave up. Too verbose and I had no interest in the characters.
February 16, 2021
I have loved the other novels that I have read by Unsworth, but I found this a slog. I usually don't mind novels in which none of the characters are sympathetic; in fact, I love nearly everything I've ever read by Joyce Cary.
Perhaps I missed something, or perhaps this sample of Unsworth's early work does not live up to his later efforts.
Not recommended, except to those who which to read everything Unsworth wrote.
Perhaps I missed something, or perhaps this sample of Unsworth's early work does not live up to his later efforts.
Not recommended, except to those who which to read everything Unsworth wrote.
July 17, 2023
A fascinating story on the boundaries of tolerance and acceptance published on the eve of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act. Unsworth's first novel was published in 1966 and for my money gets this right before Irish Murdoch really hit the mark in 1970. Of course we get a cornucopia of duckies and arm-waving flamboyance with Max. In contrast Moss is quiet, masculine and repressed and it's his business partner Foley who is artistic but straight.
It's a compact Cornish tale, fully peopled, background scenic, framed with the cherubic comedy setting of a start-up gnome manufactury. Quite why this only has 36 ratings I don't know - I think 'The Partnership' has been unjustly forgotten, as a story of its time that can still be enjoyed nearly 60 years on.
It's a compact Cornish tale, fully peopled, background scenic, framed with the cherubic comedy setting of a start-up gnome manufactury. Quite why this only has 36 ratings I don't know - I think 'The Partnership' has been unjustly forgotten, as a story of its time that can still be enjoyed nearly 60 years on.
August 31, 2020
The Partnership was Barry Unsworth’s first novel and feels rather different in both style and content from most of his other books. It deals with a business arrangement, and therefore relationship of sorts between Foley and Moss. They design and manufacture plaster pixies for the tourist trade in a Cornish seaside village. There’s a division of labour between them and as the book progresses, divisions of other sorts emerge as well.
There’s a hint of Under Milk Wood about the setting, though there’s no attempt at poetry. What we do have, however, is a portrayal of a small community that is impinged upon by outsiders and their ideas. Not that all of the characters were born and bred Cornish. They weren’t, and so to some extent the book covers some similar ground to Julian Barnes’s England England. But it is both more and less than this.
The Partnership is about the psychology and the mechanics of the relationship between Mss and Foley. Quite different in personality as well as other highly significant traits, they cooperate to achieve a common goal. Perhaps like any relationship, their pragmatic business arrangement succeeds while its boundaries are defined and agreed. Its success is limited, however, and both yearn for something else. What they individually desire leads eventually to their becoming incompatible, however.
The Partnerrship is a must for someone like me who is a confirmed addict of Barry Unsworth’s work, but it is definitely not a place to start. Some of the issues the book deals with have dated, as have the ways in which they are treated. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, once I had come to terms with its limitations.
https://philipspires.blogspot.com/200...
There’s a hint of Under Milk Wood about the setting, though there’s no attempt at poetry. What we do have, however, is a portrayal of a small community that is impinged upon by outsiders and their ideas. Not that all of the characters were born and bred Cornish. They weren’t, and so to some extent the book covers some similar ground to Julian Barnes’s England England. But it is both more and less than this.
The Partnership is about the psychology and the mechanics of the relationship between Mss and Foley. Quite different in personality as well as other highly significant traits, they cooperate to achieve a common goal. Perhaps like any relationship, their pragmatic business arrangement succeeds while its boundaries are defined and agreed. Its success is limited, however, and both yearn for something else. What they individually desire leads eventually to their becoming incompatible, however.
The Partnerrship is a must for someone like me who is a confirmed addict of Barry Unsworth’s work, but it is definitely not a place to start. Some of the issues the book deals with have dated, as have the ways in which they are treated. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, once I had come to terms with its limitations.
https://philipspires.blogspot.com/200...
January 3, 2013
Intriguing at times, mundane at others. Unsworth's most engaging work was certainly still in his future when he wrote this. The characters are vivid, but the situation left something to be desired. Maybe I just can't see pixies (see cherubs and garden gnomes) as something worth investing that much of your emotional being in. I was further mystified by Bailey's crisis which could have been solved with a bucket of paint. Are the Brits really that litigious that they wouldn't give him a chance to pour some whitewash over the mural? This book had me riveted until the moment that Gwendoline re-surfaced. After that, its impact was damp at best. I did like Unsworth's use of themes and symbolic parallels in this novel. I wonder how the gay community felt about this book and its characters.
January 14, 2008
This is one of my favorites reads of the last couple of years.
October 16, 2008
Creepy but fascinating psychological portrait
April 12, 2012
Intense book about two partners and their relationship. Not all that one partner thought it was.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews