This novel won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year award. Anne Duchene
in the Times Literary Supplement suspected it of some odd and regrettable compulsions towards up-to-dateness.
qtd. in
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
The film made from it did better...
Literary responses
Penelope Fitzgerald
A sentence from Anne Duchêne
, reviewing this book for the Times Literary Supplement, reads like a summary of responses to PF
: Her writing, as ever, has a natural authority, is very funny...
Literary responses
Monica Furlong
In the Times Literary SupplementAnn Duchene
greeted this book with enthusiasm. Most of the time, she wrote, the story moves seamlessly, governed by a vivid, confident pen and by a generous intelligence. The book...
Literary responses
Jane Gardam
Opinions used to advertise this volume included one from Elaine Feinstein
, who called JGa spare and elegant master of her art.
Anne Duchêne
, however, provided an unusually unenthusiastic...
Literary responses
Edith Templeton
Anne Duchêne
in the Times Literary Supplement described the book as mildly amazing, today, in being a high sexual fantasy, postulating female submission to men. Though ultimately trivial, it is spirited, if silly, stuff...
Literary responses
Christina Stead
Anne Duchêne
, too, expressed admiration for this weirdly laborious, gothic story, calling it a sombre panel, a long and painful expressionist essay, with really only three—or two and a half—characters. She reserved her highest...
Literary responses
Christina Stead
Thirty years after publication, Anne Duchêne
, also in the Times Literary Supplement, recorded her delight in this iridescent comedy. Stead, she suggested, was a kind of dark star among modern novelists—not visible...
Literary responses
Christina Stead
Anne Duchêne
called this book, on its appearance as a Virago Modern Classic in 1981, dark, demonic, almost unrelievedly ugly, a rancid and claustrophobic criticising of capitalism, and of what it does to human emotions...
Literary responses
Christina Stead
Initial New York reviewers were unenthusiastic, calling this book thin-blooded or disappointing.
qtd. in
Rowley, Hazel. Christina Stead: A Biography. Secker and Warburg, 1995.
391
On its Virago
re-appearance in 1981, the word was radiant. Anne Duchêne
placed it at the opposite pole from Stead's recent...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Duchêne, Anne. “Edith Templeton: Murder in EstorilTimes Literary Supplement, p. 21.
Duchêne, Anne. “Life in the aquarium”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4095, p. 1110.
Duchêne, Anne. “The getting of wisdom”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4405, p. 964.
Duchêne, Anne. “Victors of love”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 3988, p. 985.