or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
54 used & new from £0.01

Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Pinkerton's Sister
 
 

Pinkerton's Sister (Paperback)

by Peter Rushforth (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
Price: £8.09 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £0.90 (10%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Only 3 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).

Want guaranteed delivery by Tuesday, November 10? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
15 new from £0.63 39 used from £0.01

Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with A Dead Language by Peter Rushforth

Pinkerton's Sister + A Dead Language
Price For Both: £15.28

Show availability and shipping details

  • This item: Pinkerton's Sister by Peter Rushforth

    In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

  • A Dead Language by Peter Rushforth

    In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions


Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

A Dead Language

A Dead Language

by Peter Rushforth
4.5 out of 5 stars (2)  £7.19
Kindergarten

Kindergarten

by Peter Rushforth
5.0 out of 5 stars (1)  £7.93
The 19th Wife

The 19th Wife

by David Ebershoff
3.6 out of 5 stars (73)  £4.68
Lord Of The Flies [1963] [DVD]

Lord Of The Flies [1963] [DVD]

DVD ~ James Aubrey; Tom Chapin; Roger Elwin; Tom Gaman; Hugh Edwards
4.2 out of 5 stars (5)  £5.98
Home

Home

by Marilynne Robinson
3.4 out of 5 stars (26)  £3.99
Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 752 pages
  • Publisher: Scribner; New edition edition (5 Sep 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0743252373
  • ISBN-13: 978-0743252379
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 459,952 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

AMAZON.CO.UK

Sometimes, a book comes along that demands attention, so considerable is its achievement. Peter Rushforth’s Pinkerton’s Sister has all the earmarks of being such a book, with the twenty-five years it took to write resulting in a novel that his publishers (for once) are fully justified in calling a ‘tour de force’. This is a sprawling, ambitious, richly detailed piece of work that recalls Joyce's Ulysses in its panoramic picture of a whole society, presented through a series of sharply observed mini-portraits (although Rushforth is more immediately accessible than his great predecessor).

Set in turn-of-the-century New York, Rushforth’s subject is the Pinkerton family, still yoked in pre-Twentieth Century ways. Alice Pinkerton is treated with care and indulgence by her family as she is ’special’; somewhere on the fringes (as her family perceives it) of sanity, and taken out to social events but always nervously observed. Alice has her own world, constructed out of the books she loves --and this literary conceit is the engine of Rushforth’s remarkable book. Alice has enriched her mind with the gothic menace of Jane Eyre and the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, the wit of Oscar Wilde, the glorious poetry of Shakespeare, the insights of Walt Whitman. With laser-like penetration, she cast a cool eye on the follies of the world around her, her observations honed by the great work of literature that are her inspiration.

Over two decades ago Peter Rushforth published his first book, the much-acclaimed Kindergarten, and that small masterpiece has lacked a companion for many years. The wait was well worthwhile: Pinkerton’s Sister may be an arm-straining volume at 729 pages, but amply rewards the patient reader’s close attention. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.



Product Description

It's turn-of-the-century New York, a city bursting with new life as the old century's order makes way for the mercantile class. But in the Pinkerton household a nineteenth-century embarrassment remains. Alice Pinkerton. Alice isn't mad exactly, but she's not sane either. She is tolerated, free to wander about, free to accompany her family to tea parties - free to be treated like a simpleton. But in truth Alice's mind is razor sharp, honed by a restless imagination, years of reading and a profound contempt for her surroundings. Left alone to read, to think, she has devoured the world that brings her mind alive: Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Michelangelo, Whitman, Poe, they are her inspiration; Jane Eyre, Catherine Moreland, Desdemona her companions. As she moves through the witless world around her, observing its prejudices, its shallow culture and its vanity, it is society that prompts her observations, viewing all through the prism of the art that has sustained and nourished her lonely life.

Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

 

Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
5 star:
 (5)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The best book I have read in seventy years as a reader!, 15 Feb 2005
By J. Cunliffe (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
PLEASE READ THIS BOOK ! It is superbly written, and it is also very very funny, a point not brought out by the reviews I have read. I have never laughed so much, and I do not normally find books hilarious. Don't be put off by negative reviews. This is a treasure of a book. Humour is an individual taste, and there may be someone out there who fails to enjoy this book. He or she will be the loser. It is a serious novel, too; there are many truths and perceptions in the flow of satire on the worthy citizens that Alice comes into contact with. One example of its wit: one of Alice's betes noir, all swathed in tartan rugs and veils for an outing in a 19th century automobile, is said to look like a "kidnapped Scottish beekeeper. "

Don't hesitate ! Read it ! Beg or borrow it ! Buy it ! Encourage the author to hurry to the publishers with the next two books; the wait will be agony, but I'll read it again whilst I'm waiting.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A joy to read, 25 Oct 2004
By Margaret J. Donaldson (N. Yorkshire) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Pinkerton's Sister (Hardcover)
I have now finished Pinkerton's Sister - but it has by no means finished with me! It's clearly one of those books which stay with one, long after reading. Alice has stayed in my mind as a personality I had met and cared about, and wanted to meet again. She didn't disappoint me, though I ached for her as well as continuing to delight in her ability to destroy the pomposity of her society in a few(?) well-chosen words and images. The description of the attack on Michaelangelo's David ( and his response) had me almost in tears with laughter. In fact, I don't remember when I last read a book that caused me to laugh out loud so much. Nearly 800 pages of her subversive humour was a joy. The literary references, the wordplay (I have a friend for whom a pun-box would be a good idea!), Alice's precision about punctuation, which puts Lynn Truss in the shade....she's a treasure. Mind you, I'm not sure I would like to meet her in real life: there are hints of the Jane Austen we see in the letters, where the caustic comments make one catch one's breath. It's not hard to see why the people she had to live among found her difficult!
I read only the first couple of pages of Part 3, and I was tense with anxiety for her, as the shadows drew round her. The change of mood is impressive, - and I almost wept for her and Annie, as I read the Pass the Parcel sections, while still shaking with laughter at the Celestial City. The way in which horror is sketched in, rather than being described in sordid detail, as is currently fashionable, is, I find, so much more powerful. However, I did not react against the gory detail of the description of the death of her father, as that, I could quite believe, was how she would have reacted, and consequently I did, too. The picture of that society which emerges from Alice's comments is fascinating. No wonder she escapes into literature - and yet it's not an escape, is it? Her reading has sharpened her mind and her ability to see through the hypocrisy. . The minor characters, sometimes only sketched in as Alice observes them, are in fact very convincing even when almost caricature (the dentist!), and the interplay of relationships within the various groups, both Alice's friends and the Comstock acolytes is very convincing
Part one could almost stand alone as a satirical portrait of any self-satisfied, self-righteous, prudish society. The whole is both immensely humorous, and immensely thought-provoking.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A work of genius?, 16 Oct 2004
By V. Rendall (Northumberland UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Pinkerton's Sister (Hardcover)
This is a novel of startling originality, totally unlike anything I've ever read before.
It tells the life in a day of 35 year old Alice Pinkerton, the supposed sister of the Ben Pinkerton in 'Madame Butterfly', and is set in New York at the turn of the last century.
Alice, ostensibly mad in an attic, is actually very well-read and intelligent. In addition to viewing her life in terms of the novels and the poetry she has read, (this book is frighteningly literate, making you wish you had read more yourself) she takes off in surreal flights of fancy when contemplating the grotesque characters amomgst whom she finds herself: Mrs. Albert Comstock, who is the big fish in the small pond of Longfellow Park.'If she'd been on the menu at the feeding of the five thousand they wouldn't have needed the second fish and the five loaves would have been entirely surplus to requirements' and so on and so on. And you'll certainly never look at Michelangelo's 'David' in the same way again.
Thiis book is a real page-turner, Peter Rushforth clearly had a whale of a time writing it. It is laugh-aloud funny, moving, even grim at times.
It is full of fun with words: puns, alliteration, onomatopoeia, joy in the sounds of words:'She scuttled then she skittled then she broke a leg'.
One could quote from every page.
This seems to me to be a great book, even a work of genius, densely textured, multi-layered, where every word counts. It is not a book to be taken up to skim for an odd five minutes, it requires to be read carefully and attentively, but the rewards are immense.
It should qualify for one of the major literary prizes since it was published just too late to make the Booker long list.
It is a wonderful achievement.

``````````````````````````````````````````````````` ,
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic!!
Pinkerton's sister is about Alice, a 35 year old, single woman, who is regarded as a madwoman and who has a stammer. Read more
Published on 19 Sep 2006 by kehs

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious and heartbreaking
One of the funniest books I have read for a long time, this account of the life of Alice Pinkerton, (sister of Lieutenant Ben Pinkerton of Madam Butterfly,) is a very effective... Read more
Published on 16 Jul 2005 by Margaret J. Donaldson

1.0 out of 5 stars Pinkerton's sister - candidate for worst book of 2004
I thought that this book was without doubt one of the worst books I have read in 2004, in fact one of the worst books I have read in a long time. Read more
Published on 20 Dec 2004 by Elaine Simpson-long

Only search this product's reviews



Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums


Listmania!


Look for similar items by category


Look for similar items by subject








i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.