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Synopsis
The four novellas that make up this book share a common theme- deception and self-deception, practised by or on the protagonists. Each story is told in prose of great assurance, narrated by a brilliantly distinctive voice. The characters include an Anglo-Italian Professor of Semiotics, undone by his own cleverness; an Irishwoman who becomes a novice in a Tibetan nunnery in Nepal; a house party of old university friends that is galvanised by a pugnacious newcomer into a demented, Buchanesque mission to restore their hostess's lost honour, and an international lawyer who takes to terrorism in pursuit of a theory. Several Deceptions is clever, funny, a little cruel. It introduces a writer of quite remarkable gifts.
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About the Author
Jane Stevenson is the author of a collection of novellas, Several Deceptions, and several novels, London Bridges, Astraea, The Pretender and The Empress of the Last Days.
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Several Deceptions
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Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Several Deceptions This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. . Seller Inventory # 7719-9780224059398
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Several Deceptions
Published by
Jonathan Cape, 1999
ISBN 10: 0224059394
ISBN 13: 9780224059398
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: Housing Works Online Bookstore, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. Minimal wear to cover. Pages clean and binding tight. shelf wear. bumped edges. Hardcover. Who is Jane Stevenson, and how does she know all this stuff? With Several Deceptions, this hitherto unheard-from British academic has unleashed a brilliant debut collection of four wicked, chatty novellas. If her astonishing range of milieu is anything to go by, Stevenson seems to be a Tibetan monk who studied European law at a prestigious Dutch university after swinging with David Bailey in '60s London. So firmly does she grasp all these different worlds--and quite a few others--you feel that she must have lived them. Her first novella, perversely titled "The Island of the Day Before Yesterday," tells of an Italian semiotician who, in the 1980s, decides to play a little new-historical prank on the academic community by passing his dumpy secretary off as a former '60s wild child. In Stevenson's world, though, the first laugher is never the last. In the second novella, a really beautiful piece of writing called "Law and Order," twin brothers fall under the spell of a powerful law professor at the University of Leiden. The author writes a vaguely sardonic--but dead-on--pastiche of aristocratic European student life. This Mann-ishness is shot through with scenes of aching loveliness, as when she describes the skaters on the canal: "From a distance, their modern dress did not call attention to itself, and the whole composed itself into a series of Breughelesque pictures, softened by the snow which fell in fat, soft, feathery flakes from the dark sky." The third novel, "The Colonel and Judy O'Grady," takes us further afield still, to the foothills of the Himalayas, where two exile communities bump up against each other: the "strange and pathetic group, known, collectively, as the Ancient Britons," left behind by her Majesty's retreating Empire and Tibetan monks fleeing religious persecution. Stevenson, bless her, is alive to the absurdities of the situation: "The shaven heads and the Panama hats met periodically in the bazaars, like animals at a watering-hole, with an entire lack of mutual curiosity." The final story, "Crossing the Water," sets in motion a wild Feydeau-ian farce involving three art historians and a manly soldier in a Suffolk country house. Despite her diverting fictional globetrotting, maybe Stevenson had better stay at home in future: this last story is a corker. The farce is hilarious, the denouement heart-wrenching. But what's most wonderful is the knowing tone. The narrator observes of his art-historian friend: "Adam knew, of course; his omniscience was legendary. I sometimes scrounge dinner with some friends in Hampstead who keep a list of things he doesn't know: it is short, and peculiar." Fans of the shifty narrations of Francine Prose, John Lanchester, and Michael Frayn will find much to love in this new voice. --Claire Dederer. Seller Inventory # AH3-02250-IN
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Several Deceptions
Published by
Jonathan Cape Ltd 06/05/1999, 1999
ISBN 10: 0224059394
ISBN 13: 9780224059398
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Several Deceptions
Published by
Jonathan Cape Ltd, London, Kent, United Kingdom, 1999
ISBN 10: 0224059394
ISBN 13: 9780224059398
Used
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First Edition
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Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. First Edition. A Good Read ships from Toronto and Niagara Falls, NY - customers outside of North America please allow two to three weeks for delivery.; 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Seller Inventory # 11417
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Several Deceptions
Seller: Kennys Bookstore, Olney, MD, U.S.A.
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Condition: Very Good. Clean copy. Fine in unclipped dustwrapper. Dustwrapper has minor wear to edges of spine but remains very good. 1999. First Edition. Hardcover. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland. Seller Inventory # KOC0025129
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Several Deceptions
Published by
Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1999
ISBN 10: 0224059394
ISBN 13: 9780224059398
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: Kennys Bookshop and Art Galleries Ltd., Galway, GY, Ireland
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Condition: Very Good. Clean copy. Fine in unclipped dustwrapper. Dustwrapper has minor wear to edges of spine but remains very good. 1999. First Edition. Hardcover. . . . . Seller Inventory # KOC0025129