- Paperback: 180 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (6 May 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099288885
- ISBN-13: 978-0099288886
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,428,224 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
In his second novel, Disappearance, the prize-winning Guyanese poet David Dabydeen provides a richly layered poetic evocation of landscape and history, memory and change. Telling the story of a brief relationship between a young Guyanese engineer and the old woman he lodges with while building sea defences for a cliff-top village near Hastings, the novel uses metaphors of building and architecture to explore not only the experience of empire, but also the fragility of all imperial monuments to withstand the "timeless barrenness" of the land and the impermanence of memory, whether in the Caribbean, Africa or in England. Dabydeen's concern with the connections between the "monstrosity" of imperialism and its "nostalgia for the monumental" with how people use rituals of commemoration to construct continuous narratives of self considers how national sentiments come to reside in a nation's architectural heritage. After hearing his landlady's tales of her years in Africa, the engineer meditates on whether, in memory, one can ever finally "get rid of the past". That question, at the heart of this powerful and moving relationship, comes down to the protagonist's shared concern with how we use disguises to mask our erasures and to keep at bay the sense that something is missing, excised, disappeared from the narratives we tell ourselves. In those disappearances, Dabydeen masterfully charts not only the integrity of land and memory but also the state of the nation as a whole. --David Marriott
Product Description
Dunsmere Cliff, on the Kent coast, is in a state of impending collapse. A young West Indian engineer is appointed to help save the village that sits on its edge. He soon discovers the history of Dunsmere and its desire, deceit and sexual cruelty.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A civil engineer, a Guyanese of Asian descent, boards with an older English widow (perhaps) in an English seaside town or perhaps village while employed as a consultant in the construction of a sea-wall. He remembers his past; she remembers her many years in Africa with her husband; and there's a narration of some of her earlier life in the town/village. Most things in life have disappeared - earlier sea-defences in Guyana and Mrs Rutherford's husband among them - and it's not clear how best to live life or just how rapacious the English have been as a nation.
In the back pages of the book are advertisements for the author's other novels and books of poetry; and for two anthologies of criticism of his work. This may give the best clue what to expect in the novel: memorable passages and images and quite possibly much significant symbolism in the narrative. The narrative itself is not that convincing - certainly not in its description of the local politics surrounding the construction of a sea-wall, and not in the description or absence of description of the life of the civil engineer - so I suppose not in the other parts. And though I read through to the end of the 160 pages, I was not gripped.
So, overall, not recommended for the general reader.
In the back pages of the book are advertisements for the author's other novels and books of poetry; and for two anthologies of criticism of his work. This may give the best clue what to expect in the novel: memorable passages and images and quite possibly much significant symbolism in the narrative. The narrative itself is not that convincing - certainly not in its description of the local politics surrounding the construction of a sea-wall, and not in the description or absence of description of the life of the civil engineer - so I suppose not in the other parts. And though I read through to the end of the 160 pages, I was not gripped.
So, overall, not recommended for the general reader.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This was a novel which made me turn from one page to the next. It was a good novel. It was a slight story, subtly told, and poetically written. There were some intricate and beautiful images as well as some moving and also funny scenes. The past is explored, memory is explored, and we see how the mind's landscape is sedimentary, layer upon layer. Some of the metaphors were a little forced, and sometimes the structure of the novel appeared through the narrative, but these were little faults in a novel which was entertaining and thought-provoking, poetic and sharp.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
