North - Hardcover

Martin, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0230000002 ISBN 13: 9780230000001

Publisher: Macmillan New Writing, 2006

Synopsis

It exposes the lives of six people who attend a school in Oxford either as student or teacher. The narrator of the story, a middle-aged man of means, is almost as enigmatic as his subject, North, a strange, elegant, charismatic Anglo-American youth. The handsome, precocious North begins a three-way relationship between himself, a beautiful 27 year-old woman teacher, and a young married, but bisexual, head of Physics who is good-looking, athletic and evangelically Christian. As the novel proceeds in various settings, Oxford, London, Ravello, Washington DC, a confidential intimacy evolves between the narrator and North and the suspense mounts as North reveals his plans for systematic seduction. The players in the game of love become entangled in sexual anarchy that accelerates the novel towards its decisive, cataclysmic climax. At the end there is an abiding mystery and an acute sense of potent evil. The reader is left wondering if there have been certain moral imperatives that have made the narrator tell less than the whole truth.Soon after arriving at his Oxford school, the enigmatic North has invited his female history teacher, Bernie, to lunch - and not, as she had thought, to discuss history. When Monty, North's married physics teacher, makes it clear that he wants Bernie for himself, North seeks to mollify him in his own particular way: by seducing him. As North and his bizarre cohort travel across Oxford, London, Ravello, and Washington, the sexual anarchy grows ever more devastating, until eventually North's farcical menage-a-trois results in death and tragedy. But what is the real story - and is the English master's version to be trusted? A dazzling psychological thriller, North is by turns erudite, audacious and brilliantly witty. An utterly assured and wholly original debut. 'Brian Martin's North spins a ripe, Fowlesian tale of sexual and spiritual intrigue . . . ' - The Independent

About this title

Review

"Brian Martin has waited too long to write his first book. He should give his vivid imagination another outing soon." -- Digby Durant, The Spectator, 8 April, 2006

"Brian Martin's North spins a ripe, Fowlesian tale of sexual and spiritual intrigue . . ." -- Boyd Tonkin, The Independent, 7 April, 2006

"Martin's crisp, lofty prose is a great success . . ." -- Simon Baker, New Statesman, 10 April, 2006

"Offers an intricate dance of love, or lovers, somewhat in the manner of Shakespearean comedy . . . agreeable and amusing." -- Allan Massie, The Scotsman, 15 April , 2006

Book Description

Who is North? Suave, brilliant, and brimming with a confidence that belies his youth, he mesmerizes everyone he meets, not least his smitten English master, who tells the story of the shadowy young man who had such a catastrophic effect on his life . . .

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan New Writing
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0230000002
• ISBN 13: 9780230000001
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 99