The four main characters in this beautifully written novel have all
come to crisis points in their lives. In England, Alice Valentine,
a retired headmistress, is dying of cancer. Her favourite son
Larry, based in America, has an acting career and a marriage which
are suffering from his self-destructive lifestyle, and a
six-year-old daughter who is already seeing a therapist. Alice's
other son, Alec, an ex-teacher and now a translator, is fighting
his dependency on his mother and his tendency to flee what is
difficult in life while trying to care for her during her illness.
Laszlo Lazar, a gay Hungarian exile living in Paris, whose play
Alex is translating, is unable to forget the way he failed his
former lover during the 1956 uprising and is forces to question his
subsequent apolitical stance. After the prizewinning Ingenious Pain
(1997) and Casanova (1998), this is Andrew Miller's first
contemporary novel. Set on 1997, the year of the Hale-Bop comet,
its characters face dramatic life changes which force them to make
a choice if they have the courage to do so. Larry and Alec find
very different ways in which to take responsibility for their
lives, while, by revisiting the past, Alice and Laszlo come to
their own forms of accommodation with the present. Andrew Miller
has written a deeply felt narrative which ranges across two
continents, from L.A's porn studios to post-communist Budapest, and
skilfully interweaves the lives of its different characters. Given
the contradictions and compromises of our histories, and the
alienation and darkness that surrounds us, the novel seems to be
saying, it is still legitimate to choose, if we can, to live with
optimism and to become reconciled with the past, in other words to
seek the oxygen of the title. This is a wonderful book which is
highly recommended. (Kirkus UK)
Shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize and Whitbread Novel of the
Year Award In the summer of 1997, four people reach a turning
point: Alice Valentine, who lies gravely ill in her West Country
home; her two sons, one still searching for a sense of direction,
the other fighting to keep his acting career and marriage afloat;
and Laszlo Lazar, who leads a comfortable life in Paris yet is
plagued by his memories of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. For each,
the time has come to assess what matters in life, and all will be
forced to take part in an act of liberation - though not
necessarily the one foreseen.
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