- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; New Ed edition (6 Mar 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099732718
- ISBN-13: 978-0099732716
- Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 2.2 x 19.9 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,316,100 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
MASON'S RETREAT is a powerful, spellbindingly readable story about a family and a place. In 1936, Edward and Edith Mason return to America after a decade in England, with their two sons Simon and Sebastien. Their destination is an old family estate on the coast of Maryland, known as 'The Retreat'. They plan to revive it, and restore their own diminished fortune. But events take a very different turn, as the house, the beautiful watery landscape, and new and insidious pressures of class tension and sexual desire begin to exert a profound effect on the family and their world. Haunting, compelling, charged with subtle eroticism and a poignant sense of transience, this is a magnificent novel. It propels Tilghman into the ranks of the great American writers.
From the Back Cover
'Tilghman's elegantly sombre novel confirms his reputation as an American Chekhov'
-Esquire
'Brilliantly described...Tilghman writes about this family in collapse with a beautifully judged blend of candour and subtlety'
-Helen Dunmore, The Times
'A superb first novel. Echoes of The Great Gatsby, William Styron's Lie Down in Darkness, O'Neill and Faulkner add further resonance to a novel that stands as a stunning individual achievement'
-Kirkus
'The old and new worlds are intriguingly transposed... Tilghman writes elegantly in long, languid sentences which evoke the Maryland atmosphere in vivid elemental descriptions'
-Michael Arditti, Independent
'Tilghman's novel is distinguished by its strong sense of place and character, and there is a rare degree of warmth and wisdom in the telling'
-Andrew Biswell, Daily Telegraph
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
Maryland's Eastern shore with it's creeks and river, heat and shade and the epic story of the defeated Mason family, who are forced to leave England in the 1930s and move back to the US - to an inheirated estate that turns out to be in shambles.
This is the kind of book that sucks you in. Before you know it you are completely engaged in the characters, their relationship with eachother and the challenges they face.
I would say that Mason's Retreat is a story of a journey. Not the journey from England to Maryland or the slip from English high society to the farming community of Maryland, but the journey of relationship and invidual goals.
It is a beautiful book and I have to commend Mr. Tilghman on his characters. They are perfectly rounded and facetted, so that I accept them, not as characters in a novel, but a real characters.
A definite must-read!!
Louise.
This is the kind of book that sucks you in. Before you know it you are completely engaged in the characters, their relationship with eachother and the challenges they face.
I would say that Mason's Retreat is a story of a journey. Not the journey from England to Maryland or the slip from English high society to the farming community of Maryland, but the journey of relationship and invidual goals.
It is a beautiful book and I have to commend Mr. Tilghman on his characters. They are perfectly rounded and facetted, so that I accept them, not as characters in a novel, but a real characters.
A definite must-read!!
Louise.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
8 reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Marvelously Rich Tale of a Family Adrift
22 Aug 2005
Format:Paperback
A page-turning, psychological exploration,with the feel of a sprawling family epic in a spare 290 pages. Tilghman crafts insightful and absorbing portraits of an array of disparate characters to tell the story of Edward and Edith Mason, who return to America at the end of the Depression with their two sons after years living in England, and the musty Victorian atmosphere of both their family relationships and the expectations of their place in the world are a potent ingredient. Their fading pretentions of British class-superiority there have been devastated by bad business decisions and they have been forced to move to the yet-unseen Mason manse, the Retreat, on the Eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay. Set in the two years leading up to the outbreak of World War II, the tensions among the four Mason family members ripple throughout their community, to include friends, lovers, and most strikingly, to their employees, including two black housekeepers and the farmhand Robert, whose racial situation in the Depression-era, rural South is rendered to clear-headed, stunning effect in many of the book's scenes.
The assured writing and psychological surprises reminded me of Thomas Mallon's "Henry and Clara", and the gathering sense of doom and inexorable tragedy, mirrored in the offstage story of Europe in 1939 reminded me again and again of Ian McEwan's "Atonement", highest of praise from me.
The assured writing and psychological surprises reminded me of Thomas Mallon's "Henry and Clara", and the gathering sense of doom and inexorable tragedy, mirrored in the offstage story of Europe in 1939 reminded me again and again of Ian McEwan's "Atonement", highest of praise from me.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Hauntingly Beautiful
22 July 1999
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Mr. Tilghman has created a gem. In a deceptively simplistic way, he allows the reader to explore the nuances of the characters' relationships. As someone who is familiar with the Eastern Shore, every detail evoked this solitary but lovely place. This is a book you'll reflect on long after the last page is read.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
REFRESHINGLY DIFFERENT--DESCRIPTIVE-- GOOD STORY!
1 Nov 1997
Format:Paperback
AN EXCELLENT ACCOUNT OF AN AREA OF THE U.S. AND THE TIMES PRECEDING W.W.2.THE AUTHOR IS CLEARLY AWARE OF THE RURAL AREA OF THE EASTERN MARYLAND SHORE AND THE PEOPLE WHO LIVED THERE IN THE EARLY 1900'S. IWOULD DEFINITELY READ MORE BY THIS AUTHOR
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