What do you think?
Rate this book
Relations
Published in 1976, The Story of the Weasel is author Carolyn Slaughter's debut novel. It won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize the following year. Published as Relations in the United States, it has been praised for its 'sensitive treatment of fraternal incest in Victorian England and for its subtle poetic prose'.
The frame story is set in 1900 Cirencester as 30-year-old Catherine Roach is writing the story of her childhood in 1880s Wandsworth, when at the age of ten she and her brother Christopher, two years her senior, discover their late father's collection of pornography. Prompted by the discovery the siblings then start a sexual relationship which lasts for three years;coming to an end on a holiday in Cornwall after which Christopher leaves home; eventually emigrating to South Africa. Catherine writes the story in order to come to terms with the damage the relationship caused herself and her brother.
The frame story is set in 1900 Cirencester as 30-year-old Catherine Roach is writing the story of her childhood in 1880s Wandsworth, when at the age of ten she and her brother Christopher, two years her senior, discover their late father's collection of pornography. Prompted by the discovery the siblings then start a sexual relationship which lasts for three years;coming to an end on a holiday in Cornwall after which Christopher leaves home; eventually emigrating to South Africa. Catherine writes the story in order to come to terms with the damage the relationship caused herself and her brother.
255 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1976
1 person is currently reading
115 people want to read
About the author
Carolyn Slaughter
19 books13 followersCarolyn Slaughter was born in New Delhi, India, and spent most of her childhood in the Kalahari Desert of what is now Botswana. Soon after leaving Africa in 1961, she wrote what would later become her highly acclaimed novel Dreams of the Kalahari. She followed this with eight more novels. After living for many years in London, she moved to the United States with her family in 1986.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 9, 2013
What exactly made me pick this book up I don't actually know. I hadn't heard of it. There don't seem to be any Goodreads reviews and I was relatively uncertain about what it was about. Still, something made me pluck it off the shelves at my library's mega book sale a couple years ago and I'm sort of glad I did. This is a book that is clearly not essential reading but it sort of felt like discovering something that was lost.
At the end of the eighteen hundreds Catherine Roach, an unhappily married woman with a baby on the way meditates on her childhood when she lived a sort of isolated life with her family in what I believe is Oxford. Her father was subject to violent outbursts of rage, her mother was passive, and her eldest brother Edward was a reclusive. It was only with middle child Christopher whom Cathy connected, to the point where their relationship became inappropriately physical.
The thing that I didn't feel as if I had a grip on was the sense of where they lived. Clearly they had some money, but from where? The violent father was necessary to the story, I believe, but I really didn't have much a sense of him other than the violence. How did he provide for his family? Their habit of hanging out in the kitchen didn't lend imagination to opulence but after the father's death there was no clear answer as to how they survived and how they took long vacations at the seaside. When Catherine marries it's clear that she marries well. We are shown maids and property, which her family clearly did not have. I would have been interested to know more about social standing, especially as their house was apparently large enough to have several extra bedrooms.
The Frenchman was an interesting character to add to the mix. He was clearly a bit of a Humbert, but there was nothing explicit in the text. Catherine clearly didn't realize how creepy he was, which is good she was young after all, but what was his game and why was the mother involved. It is possible that he was providing for the family in a more monetary way than just supplying fancy underwear, but again, this was not given explicitly.
Innocence is a big part of this novel, I think. The two children are clearly behaving inappropriately and they seem to understand that, to a degree, as they keep their relationship hidden. However there is still a lot of in-culpability here, as they are very young and as they grow and the relationship continues the elder of the two realizes it's not okay and stops it.
I sort of wonder, sometimes, what it is about the name Catherine, shortened to Cathy, that gears authors towards incest plots. Between this, 'Wuthering Heights' (not explicit but clearly there's something a little odd there, they were raised as siblings), 'A Spell of Winter', and 'Flowers in the Attic' it seems a little strange.
At the end of the eighteen hundreds Catherine Roach, an unhappily married woman with a baby on the way meditates on her childhood when she lived a sort of isolated life with her family in what I believe is Oxford. Her father was subject to violent outbursts of rage, her mother was passive, and her eldest brother Edward was a reclusive. It was only with middle child Christopher whom Cathy connected, to the point where their relationship became inappropriately physical.
The thing that I didn't feel as if I had a grip on was the sense of where they lived. Clearly they had some money, but from where? The violent father was necessary to the story, I believe, but I really didn't have much a sense of him other than the violence. How did he provide for his family? Their habit of hanging out in the kitchen didn't lend imagination to opulence but after the father's death there was no clear answer as to how they survived and how they took long vacations at the seaside. When Catherine marries it's clear that she marries well. We are shown maids and property, which her family clearly did not have. I would have been interested to know more about social standing, especially as their house was apparently large enough to have several extra bedrooms.
The Frenchman was an interesting character to add to the mix. He was clearly a bit of a Humbert, but there was nothing explicit in the text. Catherine clearly didn't realize how creepy he was, which is good she was young after all, but what was his game and why was the mother involved. It is possible that he was providing for the family in a more monetary way than just supplying fancy underwear, but again, this was not given explicitly.
Innocence is a big part of this novel, I think. The two children are clearly behaving inappropriately and they seem to understand that, to a degree, as they keep their relationship hidden. However there is still a lot of in-culpability here, as they are very young and as they grow and the relationship continues the elder of the two realizes it's not okay and stops it.
I sort of wonder, sometimes, what it is about the name Catherine, shortened to Cathy, that gears authors towards incest plots. Between this, 'Wuthering Heights' (not explicit but clearly there's something a little odd there, they were raised as siblings), 'A Spell of Winter', and 'Flowers in the Attic' it seems a little strange.
May 4, 2013
Beautifully written but strange fantasy tale set in the late 19th early 20th century-- think 'Wuthering Heights' meets 'Portrait of Jennie'. Brother and sister find a 'pandora's box' while playing hide and seek -- a trunk of erotic etchings. On the cusp of adolescence, they attempt to mimic what they are seeing. This leads to a playful habit, yet with passage of years the two find they are in love. With maturity comes the realization they must part, but neither can find happiness apart from one another. This is a study of the brokenness of human nature/the family unit; the intimate encounters described are brief and very vague-- this is by no means a spicy novel, the themes are far deeper. Many interwoven references to the literature of the 19th century, and stunning descriptions of the beauty of rural life, the sea, and nature.
May 27, 2023
I found this at a yard sale and was sure it was either a weird special edition of Flowers in the Attic or some kind of Flowers fan fiction from the 70s - I mean, the plot is basically the same (minus the attic, mind) and the crazy sibling lovers are also called Cathy and Chris (!). Turns out - this book was actually published a few years earlier than Flowers, so the one thing I took away from it was that VC Andrews was likely plagiarising big time. That being said, Flowers reads like a literature Nobel winner in comparison to whatever this is, and we all know how ridiculous it was soooo… yeah.
February 27, 2018
Superb.
February 18, 2022
Beautifully written
September 11, 2023
After reading the synopsis, I chose to read this book because it was about incest between sibling with the same names and age range as the ones in "Flowers In The Attic", which it predates by a couple of years. The mothers boyfriend was kind of a cross between Bart Sr. and Paul, but creepier. Years after this happened, Cathy is writing this story down in a book, like Cathy did in "If There Be Thorns". Overall, it was a lot different, despite the above mentioned similarity's, and it was pretty good too, but a little too explicit(even more so then the Dollanganger books). I rate it 7/10 stars.
Want to read
April 25, 2010Story of brother-sister relationship.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews