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The Law of Enclosures
  
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The Law of Enclosures (Hardcover)

by Dale Peck (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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2 new from £68.13 22 used from £0.01
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Hardcover 10 used & new from £1.71
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Chatto & Windus; First Edition edition (22 Feb 1996)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0701161604
  • ISBN-13: 978-0701161606
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product Description

Review
From the widely praised author of Martin and John (1993) comes another grim, affecting, and structurally ambitious work, this a blend of fiction and biography based on the lives of the author's parents. Beatrice and Henry are college lovers who meet shortly after her father dies. The reclusive and death-obsessed Beatrice, whose mother has been dead for several years, is attracted to brain-cancer-stricken Henry ("he was beautiful in the way dying young men are beautiful"), and the two of them have several months of living-for-the-moment bliss before Henry agrees to a risky operation that they're both sure will kill him. Meanwhile, a concurrent storyline concerns a bitter married couple, Beatrice and Henry, who've been together for 40 years. When the older Beatrice and Henry visit an old friend who's dying of cancer, the two are brought face to face with their wasted lives. After young Henry survives his operation, Peck shows the marriage of young Beatrice and Henry disintegrating in alcohol and distrust, petty insults and horrible affairs. The old Henry and Beatrice move to the country and have one last chance to get over a lifetime of mistakes. The entire middle of the book, though, is taken up with a straight biographical description of Dale Peck Sr., a violent, alcoholic womanizer who may have caused the death of his pregnant wife. This section appears as if to show the troubled source for the fictional lives of Beatrice and Henry. And it is no accident that the couple has an estranged son named John, the same John who was the autobiographical character in Martin and John. The re-using of a character is an interesting device that gives the novel extra weight, as if one were watching a painful but fascinating and beautifully crafted documentary. Overall, Peck uses his relentless eye for human weakness to paint an exceedingly harsh and detailed portrait of a failed father and husband. Bleak, challenging, and impressive. (Kirkus Reviews)

Product Description
Henry and Beatrice meet and fall in love and set up house together. Yet in old age, they find themselves stuck in a sour, loveless marriage which is suddenly transformed by a new understanding and a bold new wave of desire.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Visceral reading, 5 Sep 2002
By DM Webster "arakis2002" (Norfolk) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Law of Enclosures (Paperback)
You don't read Dale Peck for an easy ride. He's complex, antagonistic; you know you're reading rather than letting it all wash over you. Yet if you persevere there are wonderful rewards. The Law of Enclosures takes some thinking about. On the surface its a love story but the centre section, Lamentations, about his own parents brings fiction very close to fact and opens the wounds cut in the fictional first part. As a result you read about raw emotions which is visceral and uncomfortable but ultimately real.
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