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The Shadow and the Peak
Douglas Lockwood came to Jamaica to recover from the heartbreak of a messy divorce. But instead of peace he found passion, and three women who threatened to turn the island idyll into a summer storm . . . The school at which Douglas has come to teach is perched on an isolated hilltop, and its pupils run wild while the staff are engaged in their own private wars. The headmaster's wife is trying to tempt him into an affair, but his heart lies with Judy, an air hostess he rescued from a plane crash. And in the background is Sylvia, an uncontrollable young girl who is madly in love with him and caught up in an adult world she doesn't understand. A gorgeously cinematic novel, The Shadow and the Peak is a gripping story by the bestselling author of The World of Suzie Wong. It was filmed in 1958 as Passionate Summer, starring Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers.
302 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1950
About the author
Richard Mason
4 books12 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Richard Mason was an English novelist. Born near Manchester, he was educated in Dorset, then worked first on a film magazine and later for the British Council. The Second World War gave him a chance to learn Japanese and he became an interrogator of prisoners of war.
Mason wrote The Wind Cannot Read which was finished during the Burma Campaign; The Shadow and the Peak (filmed as Passionate Summer, starring Dirk Bogarde); and The Fever Tree, a story of espionage set in India and Nepal.
His experiences while living in Hong Kong inspired him to write The World of Suzie Wong. This was adapted into a Broadway play in 1958 and a film in 1960.
Mason died of throat cancer in Rome, where he had lived for nearly 40 years.
Richard Mason was an English novelist. Born near Manchester, he was educated in Dorset, then worked first on a film magazine and later for the British Council. The Second World War gave him a chance to learn Japanese and he became an interrogator of prisoners of war.
Mason wrote The Wind Cannot Read which was finished during the Burma Campaign; The Shadow and the Peak (filmed as Passionate Summer, starring Dirk Bogarde); and The Fever Tree, a story of espionage set in India and Nepal.
His experiences while living in Hong Kong inspired him to write The World of Suzie Wong. This was adapted into a Broadway play in 1958 and a film in 1960.
Mason died of throat cancer in Rome, where he had lived for nearly 40 years.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
February 18, 2022
Perhaps The Shadow and the Peak is something of a transitional novel. I'm thinking of it in regards to the generation of writers, playwrights, and filmmakers known as Angry Young Men in 1950s Britain. Richard Mason certainly doesn't belong among them. He wrote his earliest novels during World War II and he was born in 1919, just a tad outside the years in which most of the Angries were born, the 1920s and early 1930s. Neither does Mason take a decidedly political or social angle in his fiction, as did the AYMs with their focus on the working class and what some saw as anarchist politics. Mason decidedly is not part of that. His fiction, after all, is known for its exotic colonial settings most of all, India, Nepal, Burma, Hong Kong, and, in Shadow and the Peak, Jamaica.
Where there is a sympathetic pulse with Mason and the AYMs is in how Shadow builds a picture of a sordid world of sexual and moral impropriety that hides behind careful colonial manners and graces. (In doing so, Mason also shares something in common with Maugham.) Published in the immediate years after World War II, in 1949, Shadow depicts Britons and colonials changed through their experiences with war. They're desperate to experiment with new ideas (Douglas, the protagonist of the novel finds employment at a "progressive" school for children in the Jamaican highlands); but the old ways of thinking, acting, and hypocritically covering up unpleasantness that in one case turns into a suicide reveals it all to be a sham). But at the same time they want to maintain traditional forms. By the end, Shadow has stomped all over discredited manners and politeness and even nudged itself into hinting at scenes of forbidden sexual lust and frank expressions that cannot yet be printed on the pages of the novel. The fact that some of these situations and words emerge from a twelve year old girl make them even more of a direct challenge to the accepted modes of behavior.
Finally, Mason also takes on the issue of racism and even colonial exploitation. But he does so in an indirect and matter of fact way that reflects the governing attitudes of 1949 Britain. So the words and thoughts of his characters will no doubt upset many a contemporary reader. Yet that is the power of the book, too. It gives such a good insight into how middle class colonial life was being pursued at that time.
Where there is a sympathetic pulse with Mason and the AYMs is in how Shadow builds a picture of a sordid world of sexual and moral impropriety that hides behind careful colonial manners and graces. (In doing so, Mason also shares something in common with Maugham.) Published in the immediate years after World War II, in 1949, Shadow depicts Britons and colonials changed through their experiences with war. They're desperate to experiment with new ideas (Douglas, the protagonist of the novel finds employment at a "progressive" school for children in the Jamaican highlands); but the old ways of thinking, acting, and hypocritically covering up unpleasantness that in one case turns into a suicide reveals it all to be a sham). But at the same time they want to maintain traditional forms. By the end, Shadow has stomped all over discredited manners and politeness and even nudged itself into hinting at scenes of forbidden sexual lust and frank expressions that cannot yet be printed on the pages of the novel. The fact that some of these situations and words emerge from a twelve year old girl make them even more of a direct challenge to the accepted modes of behavior.
Finally, Mason also takes on the issue of racism and even colonial exploitation. But he does so in an indirect and matter of fact way that reflects the governing attitudes of 1949 Britain. So the words and thoughts of his characters will no doubt upset many a contemporary reader. Yet that is the power of the book, too. It gives such a good insight into how middle class colonial life was being pursued at that time.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review