Several Deceptions [Hardcover]

Several Deceptions, Jane Stevenson's first work of fiction, explores the topic of deceit through four quite distinct novellas: "The Island of the Day Before Yesterday"; "Law and Order"; "The Colonel and Judy O'Grady" and "Crossing the Water". The settings are bourgeois, urbane--"Crossing the Water" is country-house farce--often giving the impression of an author "in the know" and playing with that knowledge. "In retrospect, I am strongly inclined to blame the whole thing on Umberto Eco" begins "The Island...", setting the scene for its semiotic indulgence in the well-worn idea of creating a woman's life through archive and story. Nemesis looms, however: the ways in which cleverness can damage, or destroy, itself becoming a central theme of the book. A perennial theme, of course, and that may be why it's easy to get a sense that you've heard, or seen, these stories before: there's a touch of Rope about the brilliance of the University lawyer and his circle in "Law and Order", a cross-dressing twist to "The Colonel and Judy O'Grady", a certain Peter's Friends feel to "Crossing the Water". Recognising the landscape is part of the pleasure of these tales, but it may not be quite enough to sustain a reader's interest through the twists and turns of the plots. --Vicky Lebeau

The four novellas that make up this book share a common theme: deception and self-deception, practised on or by the protagonists.

Introducing a major new talent - a clever, funny, cruel collection for grown-ups

These four novellas are narrated by a brilliantly distinctive voice telling the stories of an Anglo-Italian Professor of Semiotics undone by his own cleverness; and Irishwoman who joins a Tibetan nunnery in India; the old university friends whose party is galvanised by a pugnacious newcomer into a demented, Buchanesque mission to restore their hostess's lost honour; and an international lawyer who takes to terrorism in pursuit of a theory. Several Deceptions is clever, funny and a little cruel and introduces a writer of quite remarkable gifts. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Jane Stevenson is the author of a collection of novellas, Several Deceptions, and several novels, London Bridges, Astraea, The Pretender and The Empress of the Last Days.