"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Handsome Thaddeus Davenant has just buried his young, wildly generous wife Letitia--a rescuer of stray dogs and a champion of street drunks. In contrast, Thaddeus is a kind of emotional cripple, scarred by a childhood spent lonely and unloved in his ancestral Quincunx House. He married Letitia for her money, as is immediately clear. Yet he would have loved her, if he had been able, and after their child is born he feels for the first time "possessed by an affection he had been unable to feel for anyone since his own infancy". When Letitia dies, the victim of a freak accident, and none of the nannies interviewed prove suitable, her mother moves in to care for the baby. Mrs Iveson has always considered Thaddeus "shoddy goods", and their détente only gradually thaws into something resembling warmth. Meanwhile, Pettie, one of the rejected nannies, has "taken a shine" to Thaddeus--with increasingly ominous portents.
Pettie inhabits a world far removed from the genteel decay of Quincunx House. Reared in the nightmarish Morning Star home, where the only affection was the creepy kind dispensed by her "Sunday uncle", Pettie is poor, broken, and pathologically starved of love. Trevor chronicles her obsession with Thaddeus in a way that makes clear both Pettie's humanity and her capacity to do serious harm. Still, this is a hopeful book. Grim as Pettie's story may be, she causes stony-hearted Thaddeus to feel the first stirrings of human sympathy, "as the warmth of blood might miraculously seep into a shadow, or anesthesia be lifted by a jolt." Throughout William Trevor's long and feted career, his subject has been nothing less than the problem of evil, and in Death in Summer, he makes a convincing case for its origins in the absence of love. --Mary Park
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Book Description Condition: VeryGood. No Highlighting or underlining. Some Wear but overall very good condition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed. Seller Inventory # 51UNSI0009BE
Book Description Hard Cover. Condition: Very Good ++. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good ++. First Canadian Edition. Hardcover with unclipped dust jacket, 214 pages; very light bumping along edges, otherwise fine. Seller Inventory # 033513
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 157 mm X 236 mm. 214 pages. Ex library book. A plastic jacket covers the original. First canadian edition. Seller Inventory # 046830
Book Description Cloth-backed Bds. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Canadian Edition. 8vo. 214 pp. A bit of edgewear and small bump to lower front cover; dustjacket is a bit worn, but still a very nice copy. Seller Inventory # 9873
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