Customer Reviews
A masterpiece of precision. - By: Mary Whipple, 03 Feb 2008 
Readers who admire careful, precise writing will thrill at Colegate's prose, which is so polished it sparkles here, avoiding pretension, excess verbiage, & empty lyricism. Instead, Colegate chooses words full of inference & irony, feeling & attitude. Broad themes, historical perspective, & a plot which contains a large cast of individualized characters from alll levels of society come alive here in a mere two hundred pages.
Setting the novel in the autumn of 1913, before the outbreak of World War I, Colegate establishes her themes in the first paragraph, asking the reader to imagine an Edwardian drawing room of a country estate, with gas lamps, a log fire, & people from a long time ago, sitting & standing in groups. In the room beyond, a "fierce electric light" shines forth, overpowering the quiet, lamplit room, making it seem shadowy & the people like "beings from a much remoter past." The gentry in this snapshot are not naïve. Even they recognize that "an age, perhaps a civilization, is coming to an end," as industrialization & urbanization are changing the centers of power, & a war looms.
A lively cast of characters is invited to Sir Randolph Nettleby's 1000-acre park for a weekend shoot, & as they converse & interact, they quickly become individualized, the reader learning of their attitudes & prejudices, their understanding of the code of behavior, & the details of their very "civilized" lives. When the shoot begins & the beaters send the birds into the air, the symbolic paralllels between the world as it has been, the world as it will be during the coming war, & the world as it may be after the war become obvious to the reader, & the death of one of the characters is not a surprise.
Colegate is never polemical, however, imbuing her story with a great deal of personal interaction, warmth, & feeling, & as the action unfolds, the reader feels simultaneously wistful about the loss of cultural identity which is about to occur & gratified that the stultifying "predictable-ness" of that life will change. This is a book to savor, written by a remarkable stylist whose prose clearly illustrates that less is more. One of the most remarkable novels of the last fifty years, it has also been made into an equallly remarkable film, starring the unforgettable James Mason. Mary Whipple
A masterpiece of precision. - By: Mary Whipple, 20 Oct 2002 This novel will thrill readers who admire careful, precise writing. Like a jeweler, Colegate has polished her prose till it sparkles, avoiding pretension, excess verbiage, & empty lyricism, choosing, instead, words full of inference & irony, feeling & attitude. Broad themes, historical perspective, & a plot which contains a large cast of individualized characters from alll levels of society come alive here in a mere two hundred pages.
Setting the novel in the autumn of 1913, before the outbreak of World War I, Colegate establishes her themes in the first paragraph, asking the reader to imagine an Edwardian drawing room of a country estate, with gas lamps, a log fire, & people from a long time ago, sitting & standing in groups. In the room beyond, a "fierce electric light" shines forth, overpowering the quiet, lamplit room, making it seem shadowy & the people like "beings from a much remoter past." The gentry in this snapshot are not naïve. Even they recognize that "an age, perhaps a civilization, is coming to an end," as industrialization & urbanization are changing the centers of power, & a war looms.
A lively cast of characters is invited to Sir Randolph Nettleby's 1000-acre park for a weekend shoot, & as they converse & interact, they quickly become individualized, the reader learning of their attitudes & prejudices, their understanding of the code of behavior, & the details of their very "civilized" lives. When the shoot begins & the beaters send the birds into the air, the symbolic paralllels between the world as it has been, the world as it will be during the coming war, & the world as it may be after the war become obvious to the reader, & the death of one of the characters is not a surprise.
Colegate is never polemical, imbuing her story with a great deal of personal interaction, warmth, & feeling, & as the action unfolds, the reader feels simultaneously wistful about the loss of cultural identity which is about to occur & gratified that the stultifying "predictable-ness" of that life will change. This is a book to savor, written by a remarkable stylist whose prose clearly illustrates that less is more. Mary Whipple
