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The Twyborn Affair (Penguin Classics)
 
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The Twyborn Affair (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

by Patrick White (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 432 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Classics (7 Sep 1993)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0140186069
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140186062
  • Product Dimensions: 17.8 x 12.7 x 2.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,034,122 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #24 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > W > White, Patrick

Product Description

Synopsis
Eudoxia is the consort of an elderly Greek who fancies himself a Byzantine emporer, Eddie is a hired hand in the Australian outback and Eadith is the madam of a London brothel. The central character in this book appears to all three, in France in 1914 and in Australia and London 25 years later.

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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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 (1)
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Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars eloquent and beautiful work on gender bending, 27 Nov 2000
By A Customer
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.!
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2.0 out of 5 stars A reading challenge that is too cryptic and too laboured, 2 Mar 2008
By Trevor Coote "Trevor Coote" (Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
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.
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