Testimonies - Softcover

Patrick O'Brian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393313166 ISBN 13: 9780393313161

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995

Synopsis

"A welcome reissue of O'Brian's moving and very fine first novel" Kirkus ReviewsDelmore Schwartz, the most influential critic in postwar America, wrote of Patrick O'Brian's first novel Testimonies: "A triumph . . . drawn forward by lyric eloquence and the story's fascination, [the reader] discovers in the end that he has encountered in a new way the sphinx and the riddle of existence itself." Schwartz' imagination was fired by this sinister tale of love and death set in Wales, a timeless story with echoes of Thomas Hardy and Mary Webb. Joseph Pugh, sick of Oxford and of teaching, decides to take some time off to live in a wild and beautiful Welsh farm valley. There he falls physically ill and is nursed back to health by Bronwen Vaughn, the wife of a neighboring farmer. Slowly, unwillingly, Bronwen and Pugh fall in love; and while that word is never spoken between them, their story is as passionate and as tragic as that of Vronsky and Anna Karenina.

About this title

Review

A subtle and fascinating tale.

A subtle and fascinating tale. "

O'Brian's greatness is present. Calmly and with wit he shows how things go wrong in little worlds.

Patrick O'Brian has a power of bringing near to the reader...savagery and tenderness, beauty and mystery and boldness and dignity.--Eudora Welty

From the Back Cover

'Testimonies', Patrick O'Brian's first novel, was written almost twenty years before the first of his famous Aubrey/Maturin series and is now available for the first time in paperback.

“Patrick O'Brian's 'Testimonies' makes one think of a great ballad or Biblical story...In O'Brian, as in Yeats, the most studied literary cultivation and knowledge bring into being works which read as if they were prior to literature and conscious literary technique.”
DELMORE SCHWARTZ

“The harmony between setting, character, narrative and method achieves an extraordinary power and intensity of emotion without ever betraying the slightest sign of effort. It is a story that does not so much speak as sing, with haunting purity of the ancient rhapsode or the bard, yet in a voice as modern and direct as today's newspaper.”
GODFREY HODGSON, 'Independent'

“O'Brian has a power of bringing near to the reader...savagery and tenderness, beauty and mystery and boldness and dignity... He's perceptive and skilled, but best of all he writes with passion.”
EUDORA WELTY

“The perfection of its prose... the characters' attitudes and motives, the delicate complexities of feeling, and the lyrical evocation of place make this book remarkable... 'Testimonies' is a perfect tragedy.”
JESSICA MANN, 'Sunday Telegraph'

“Wonderfully portrayed... the uncompromising detail of the scenery, the small, revealing exchanges of social life and the persuasive development of character are those of a master-novelist working.”
PHILIPPA GREGORY, 'Sunday Times'

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0393313166
• ISBN 13: 9780393313161
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 228