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Several Deceptions
 
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Several Deceptions (Hardcover)

by Jane Stevenson (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £14.99
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 263 pages
  • Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd (6 May 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0224059394
  • ISBN-13: 978-0224059398
  • Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 13.8 x 2.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 2,064,519 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
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

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

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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable collection of 4 novellas, 4 Sep 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Several Deceptions (Paperback)
A book of four novellas whose settings are widely dispersed across the globe. Each novella seems solidly set (to this reader) in its milieu, despite the fact that the narrator/central character in each are, respectively, an anglo-italian ex-playboy turned academic, an upper-class student from the Netherlands, an Irish woman in a community of Tibetan monks and a dissolute English art historian. Interestingly for a female writer three of these are men: Stevenson doesn't give them all a completely convincing voice but the prose is pellucid and the narrative drive strong. I enjoyed this book greatly and look forward to future works by the same writer.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Nicely done despite flaws, 25 Jul 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Several Deceptions (Paperback)
Very well written and enjoyable. The author is a gifted writer whose prose flows transparently and swiftly along; you forget you are reading for a while which is the ultimate art which conceals art. I am halfway through her London Bridges which is equally enjoyable. Minor complaint: Some of the characters are cardboard cliches (e.g. the Sandhurst trained soldier in the last novella in Several Deceptions); an academic's concept of what soldiers are like. If Ms Stevenson can learn to dig a bit more under the surface and avoid parodies she will rise to the first rank of fiction writers.
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