- Paperback: 432 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Classics; New Ed edition (15 Jun 1995)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099458217
- ISBN-13: 978-0099458210
- Product Dimensions: 13 x 2.7 x 19.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 444,879 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Twyborn Affair (Vintage Classics)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"It challenges comparison with some of the world's most bizarre masterpieces." -- "Financial Times"
Product Description
Eddie Twyborn is bisexual and beautiful, the son of a Judge and a drunken mother. With his androgynous hero - Eudoxia/Eddie/Eadith Twyborn - and through his search for identity, for self-affirmation and love in its many forms, Patrick White takes us into the ambiguous landscapes, sexual, psychological and spiritual, of the human condition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Australian Patrick White may have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he is virtually unknown in America, where I had to find this book used on the web as it is out of print. I was introduced to Patrick White via another of his novels, "A Fringe of Leaves" when I was in Sydney. Simply put, I couldn't put it down. "The Twyborn Affair" was the second of his many books that I read (I've since picked up nearly all of them in the U.K.) and it is a fascinating story about a sexually ambiguous/bisexual(?)man who leads three different lives in the books three sections: one in France, as a woman before World War I, another in Australia, as a man, on a sheep station and the third, in London as a madam at an exclusive brothel. White's novels take patience; the beginnings are often cryptic and it can take some time before the machinations of the plot and the characters are revealed. The reader is amply rewarded with lyrical prose and poignant characterization. After the first fifty pages, one is unable to put the book down. My husband, who is Australian, had never read White, dismissing him as "too literary" and hence inaccessible. I perservered with The Twyborne Affair and he found himself hooked well into the first section. The evolution of Eudoxia/Eddie/Eadie is not only a gripping and often erotic tale, but a parable far ahead of its time in its dealings with sexual identity and ambiguity. I can't recommend this book highly enough. It would make a great mini-series or film! Bravo for reissuing this work of art in the U.K.!
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Written with Jamesian prolixity in a Woolfian stream of consciousness style and with a modern sexual explicitness, The Twyborn Affair is a true reading challenge. Basically the novel is divided into three parts which take place respectively in a French villa on the eve of the Great War, in an Australian mountain range early in the Second World War and in a London brothel around the same time. Each setting is seen through the eyes in turn by sexually ambivalent Eudoxia, Eddie and Eadith, though their relationship with each other is not at all clear. In fact, for most of the book it is a chore trying to unravel who is relating to whom, so many people appear, disappear and reappear. The theme of Patrick White's novel is that of sexual confusion and identity and the search for love by those afflicted by their insecurity but I'm afraid that the subject is dealt with in an unpleasant and exploitative manner rather with the sensitivity that it merits.
Though a lot of work has gone into its creation, and as well crafted as it undoubtedly is, the overall effect of the novel is too laboured and at times tedious to read. If you have something to say then why make it as frustratingly cryptic as this? I'm sure that the Twyborn Affair will have many fans (it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize but withdrawn by the author), such as the previous reviewer, but I cannot personally recommend a book so convoluted and nebulous.
Though a lot of work has gone into its creation, and as well crafted as it undoubtedly is, the overall effect of the novel is too laboured and at times tedious to read. If you have something to say then why make it as frustratingly cryptic as this? I'm sure that the Twyborn Affair will have many fans (it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize but withdrawn by the author), such as the previous reviewer, but I cannot personally recommend a book so convoluted and nebulous.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Radiant
6 Feb 2008
Format:Mass Market Paperback
In his autobiography, Patrick White calls this one of his three best books.
(The other two: The Aunt's Story and The Solid Mandala.)
I agree.
It shimmers with his usual lustrous prose. And the journey of his main character through various incarnations--drag queen in Greece, WWI soldier in France, jackaroo (ranch hand) in Australia, and finally expatriate again in England--is little short of amazing.
It is also eye-opening about White himself, and his parents.
Brilliant stuff.
As always with White, while reading it you have the sense that you are not reading but listening to your own mind. Or listening to God's mind.
Wonderful.
(The other two: The Aunt's Story and The Solid Mandala.)
I agree.
It shimmers with his usual lustrous prose. And the journey of his main character through various incarnations--drag queen in Greece, WWI soldier in France, jackaroo (ranch hand) in Australia, and finally expatriate again in England--is little short of amazing.
It is also eye-opening about White himself, and his parents.
Brilliant stuff.
As always with White, while reading it you have the sense that you are not reading but listening to your own mind. Or listening to God's mind.
Wonderful.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Another Classic
14 July 2009
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Fantastic exploration of a transvestites self discovery between Rural Australia and Europe.Set in a period between ww1 & 2.A writer of genius.If you read and like his books you will eventually return to read them all.Incomparable.
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