Loving - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860461204 ISBN 13: 9781860461200

Synopsis

Set in a wealthy English household in rural Ireland during the First World War, Loving portrays life from the viewpoint of domestic servants, who wait upon a mother and daughter and the daughter's two little girls. The young husband is away at the front, which leaves the door open for the neighbour, Captain Davenport, to arrive on his bicycle and share the lady's bed. But the sexual activity is by no maens confined to "the quality"- the two parlour maids, Edith and Kate, are each the object of male affection, for Ruance, the newly promoted butler has his eye on one, and Paddy the Irish lampman (who also takes care of the peacocks) is not indifferent to the other. All these affaires are conducted to a chorus of tart comment from the rest of the female domestics. The simple tale of romance in time of war is most beautifully illuminated in the telling, and especially in the masterly dialogue which captures every subtlety of feeling.

About this title

Review:

No English novel of the 1940s has better stood the test of time. Indeed Loving has gathered power, the way photographs and very few novels do, simply by outlasting the people in it. The characters we meet seem so real, so attended to, so beautifully themselves, that it is a question whether we can forgive them for ever having to die. Lorin Stein, Los Angeles Review of Books
Loving is dominated by what it excludes as much by the war as by the interior lives of its characters. For both the war and the interior life remain a void within the novel, which Green s setting and style allow him to skirt while making us aware that he skirts them. In that, the novel
stands as perhaps the purest example of the art of exclusion, suggesting the impossibility of seeing life steady and seeing it whole. Michael Gorra
"In a masterpiece like Loving...Green was able so exquisitely to modulate his idiom to suit his glorious and trivial subject." --Brooke Allen, New Criterion
"He brings pleasure--a pleasure more intense, more original, more rewarding than that offered by any of his contemporaries...This writer is unique. No fiction has ever thrilled me in the same way as the great moments in Living and Loving; I have been moved by Tolstoy, Lawrence, Proust and others, perhaps more so, but not in the same way." --Sebastian Faulk, The Guardian
"Loving is a classic upstairs-downstairs story, with the emphasis on downstairs...Green's generosity towards even the most scheming and rascally of them offers a lesson you never forget." --Richard Lacayo, Time

Green s keen ear for dialogue and lightness of touch are absolutely masterful, and it is my sincere hope that we will not lose this hilarious, challenging, delightful little book again. Hal Hlavinka, The Brooklyn Daily
"

"No English novel of the 1940s has better stood the test of time. Indeed Loving has gathered power, the way photographs and very few novels do, simply by outlasting the people in it. The characters we meet seem so real, so attended to, so beautifully themselves, that it is a question whether we can forgive them for ever having to die." --Lorin Stein, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Loving is dominated by what it excludes--as much by the war as by the interior lives of its characters. For both the war and the interior life remain a void within the novel, which Green's setting and style allow him to skirt while making us aware that he skirts them. In that, the novel
stands as perhaps the purest example of the art of exclusion, suggesting the impossibility of seeing life steady and seeing it whole." --Michael Gorra

"In a masterpiece like Loving...Green was able so exquisitely to modulate his idiom to suit his glorious and trivial subject." --Brooke Allen, New Criterion

"He brings pleasure--a pleasure more intense, more original, more rewarding than that offered by any of his contemporaries...This writer is unique. No fiction has ever thrilled me in the same way as the great moments in Living and Loving; I have been moved by Tolstoy, Lawrence, Proust and others, perhaps more so, but not in the same way." --Sebastian Faulk, The Guardian

"Loving is a classic upstairs-downstairs story, with the emphasis on downstairs...Green's generosity towards even the most scheming and rascally of them offers a lesson you never forget." --Richard Lacayo, Time

"Green's keen ear for dialogue and lightness of touch are absolutely masterful, and it is my sincere hope that we will not lose this hilarious, challenging, delightful little book again." --Hal Hlavinka, The Brooklyn Daily

Loving's drama (and its comedy, too) is the anarchy of uncertainty...serves nicely as a parable for our liminal political moment.
--Dan Piepenbring, The Paris Review

In all of these novels we are made aware of the most profound and surprising truths about life, love and the human heart without being able to pinpoint any one page, line, or moment of epiphany. To read all three back-to-back is to find oneself in the presence of rare genius, fit to sit along Woolf, Fitzgerald and Joyce on anyone's shelf of classics. Henry Green is here to stay.
--David Wright, The Seattle Times

This new edition...is cause for celebration...[Green] wriggles free of categories, the true strangeness of his prose not always evident until we slow down to see it has been hiding in plain sight.
--Dorian Stuber, Numero Cinq

About the Author:

Henry Green (1905-1973) was the pen name of Henry Vincent Yorke. Born near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, England, he was educated at Eton and Oxford and went on to become the managing director of his family's engineering business, writing novels in his spare time. His first novel, Blindness (1926), was written while he was at Oxford. He married in 1929 and had one son, and during the Second World War served in the Auxiliary Fire Service. Between 1926 and 1952 he wrote nine novels, Blindness, Living, Party Going, Caught, Loving, Back, Concluding, Nothing, and Doting, and a memoir, Pack My Bag.

Roxana Robinson is the author of eight works of fiction, including the novels Cost and Sparta. She is also the author of Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she edited The New York Stories of Edith Wharton and wrote the introduction to Elizabeth Taylor's A View of the Harbour, both published by NYRB Classics. Robinson is currently the president of the Authors Guild.

About this edition

• ISBN 10: 1860461204
• ISBN 13: 9781860461200
• Binding: Paperback