- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Prentice Hall & IBD; 1st American Ed edition (10 Aug 1992)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0684194120
- ISBN-13: 978-0684194127
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 14.2 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,140,557 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Synopsis
A celebrity scholar in a small village tears her nephews from their immediate family and raises them in an atmosphere of cruelty, and when a grown nephew returns to the village twenty years later, he sees that his aunt has come full circle.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
This is an early book in the Charlie Peace series. Although a bit dated it is worth reading if you are interested in the development of this character. It's a clever story too!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
ONE OF BARNARD'S BEST
6 Sep 2010
Format:Paperback
Not a lot of action but plenty of character study. Great novel and I do mean great. The subtle poison that our Miss Lydia injects into her victim's minds and hearts change their lives forever. Her final comeuppance is quite masterful. The ending stays with you long after you finish the last sentence. Recommended most highly
Brilliant novel, brilliant mystery
27 Sep 2006
Format:Paperback
Robert Barnard's wonderful books fall into two rough periods.
His earlier books were primarily social satires, ripping pretensions and class pomposity right and left. They also happened to be good mysteries, but that was secondary.
His later books--roughly from Death and the Chaste Apprentice on--have been less about satire and more about the difficulties and small tragedies everyone, of every class, must face.
This book, A Fatal Attachment, includes both. The chief protagonist, and victim, Lydia Perceval, is a smart, manipulative, ruthless, self-deluded snob--who "appropriates" others' children to mold them into the Romantic heroes she dreams of, but destroys everyone in the process.
The portrait of her and the harm she does is biting; but--like all Barnard's portraits--also sympathetic (though not forgiving).
She gets her comeuppance in a way that no one could have foreseen. You have to wait till the very last four sentences to realize just how unexpected, and how karmic, her fate is.
The other characters are all more sympathetically dealt with, and all form a complex picture of parental-vs.-sibling rivalries, and class-vs.-personal conflicts.
A masterful study of a small town in England, and a brilliant portrait of its people and of universal loss and redemption.
His earlier books were primarily social satires, ripping pretensions and class pomposity right and left. They also happened to be good mysteries, but that was secondary.
His later books--roughly from Death and the Chaste Apprentice on--have been less about satire and more about the difficulties and small tragedies everyone, of every class, must face.
This book, A Fatal Attachment, includes both. The chief protagonist, and victim, Lydia Perceval, is a smart, manipulative, ruthless, self-deluded snob--who "appropriates" others' children to mold them into the Romantic heroes she dreams of, but destroys everyone in the process.
The portrait of her and the harm she does is biting; but--like all Barnard's portraits--also sympathetic (though not forgiving).
She gets her comeuppance in a way that no one could have foreseen. You have to wait till the very last four sentences to realize just how unexpected, and how karmic, her fate is.
The other characters are all more sympathetically dealt with, and all form a complex picture of parental-vs.-sibling rivalries, and class-vs.-personal conflicts.
A masterful study of a small town in England, and a brilliant portrait of its people and of universal loss and redemption.
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