- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (28 Jan 1988)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140097562
- ISBN-13: 978-0140097566
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.7 x 1.8 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 475,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
'Genteel mostly, respectable all, the world here is London SW, south of the river. With a fruitful marriage (and a quick, astonishing adulterous bounce) behind her, comfortable, amiable Mrs Aidallbery - Elizabeth - is in hospital for a hysterectomy.
'So is Sylvie Clapper, with false teeth and bleached hair, young witless, cheery. She lives with a slippery Irishman: no children yet and now no chance. Likewise confined, devout Miss Samson with the raw blackberry birthmark worries about her boarding-house, for believers only, and the discovery that her Christian mentor died in disbelief. And Lily Drucker, after repeated abortions, is in for childbirth, while her clawed mother-in-law tries to bait back her son with sausage rolls and Lincoln Creams... And there is William Trevor, taking relays from flies on a hundred walls, snipping, linking, shaping his material with delicate understanding, respect and a sparing trickle - just enough - of humour... A finely observed, gently sensitive comedy, delightful to read, like lived experience to remember' - "Daily Telegraph"
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2 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
never skip a Trevor novel
26 Jan 2008
Format:Paperback
Trevor's prose, as usual, does not fail to disappoint; his language is one of melancholy, longing, and of a quiet despair. In this novel, though, there is a gleam of hope beneath the dusty debris of the everyday, perhaps precisely because, in the lives of the women featured in this novel, the everyday has been disrupted. Each of the four primary female characters (Elizabeth of the title being the central character) is in the hospital, one trying to see through a successful pregnancy after many failures and the other three having hysterectomies. Each, lying in bed and surrounded by strangers, is forced to look at herself through strangers' eyes, to regard herself and the people in her life in a new light. And in each woman's life, a significant rupture occurs during this time of forced contemplation. Trevor thus puts to us the question: what if we were forced to deal with each crisis, removed from the comfort of the everyday, removed from our everyday perfeceptions not only of others but of our very on selves? It is a fascinating question and one that Trevor probes deeply and gently, exposing each nerve fiber laid raw by these circumstances. In the stripped-down setting of a four-bed hospital room, Trevor asks us to realize what it truly is to reflect on the difficulties, troubles, and disasters of daily life-- when we are stripped bare of the defenses that we are so accustomed to using to buffer raw emotions. Elizabeth Alone is a quiet, yet powerful, work.
3 of 9 people found the following review helpful
An Early Trevor Gem
4 April 2000
Format:Paperback
Readers of Trevor's more recent books--Death in Summer, Felicia's Journey, Two Lives, After Rain--will enjoy this earlier novel, which has all the trademark Trevor strengths: economy, wit, good carpentry, and that rare thing, truth.
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