The second installment in one of the most deeply curious works of
modern fiction: a romantic celebration of the South in the period
leading up to the Civil War, by an acclaimed American writer who
has spent most of his life living abroad. Green, born in Paris in
1900, grew up listening to the tales of the Old South told by his
mother, raised in Virginia. During his long and prolific career, he
has published a number of powerful, somber novels, plays, and a
series of acclaimed memoirs and diaries. But he never forgot his
mother's stories of an elegant, untroubled life in the Old South.
The first volume in the ongoing series, The Distant Lands (1991),
was published in France in the 1980s and became a phenomenal
bestseller. His protagonist, Elizabeth Escridge, is a beautiful,
willful, deeply romantic Englishwoman. The story followed the
adolescent Elizabeth's rather complex romantic entanglements,
centered around a Georgia plantation, and culminating in a duel in
which her former lover and her husband kill each other. Now, Green
traces her still tempestuous life in the years leading up to the
outbreak of war, as she attempts to conform to the intricacies of
high-society life in Savannah, raise her son, unravel some family
mysteries, and resist the romantic advances of various dashing
gentlemen. She marries a cousin, only to lose him in the war's
first major battle. Despite the overheated drama, this is no Gone
With the Wind: Green can write, and he knows how to set a large,
shrewdly detailed cast in motion. The gothic plot (of betrayals,
frustrated loves, grim secrets) is lively and inventive. But this
is a world without larger moral dimensions: Slavery is kept largely
offstage, and Green, sadly, really does seem to believe, as the
narrative notes, that the gentlemanly, put-upon South was merely
"defending its lands" in a war that took 600,000 lives. A
troubling, oddly outdated work. (Kirkus Reviews)
This sequel to Julian Green's epic novel of the ante-bellum South,
The Distant Lands, opens with the last tense moments of peace that
led up to the final confrontation and all-out war between the North
and South. As one state after another secedes from the Union, the
gracious-living aristocracy of the old South goes on dancing and
feasting and intriguing among themselves as never before. Once
again we meet the personages of The Distant Lands: the aunts and
uncles and the cousins, the omniscient Charlie Jones, the sinister
Miss Llewelyn and, above all, Elizabeth, the beautiful widowed
Englishwoman, living with her little son in slightly reduced
splendor in Savannah, Georgia. The picture which the nonagenarian
Julian Green paints is a nostalgic, poetic and romantic one of a
world doomed to extinction but still scintillating brightly,
engrossed in its own courtly passions and genteel observances. This
feast of story-telling is partly based upon reminiscences of the
old South told to him by the author's own 'Southern belle' mother,
with a historical background that is both authentic and
enthralling.
General
Imprint: |
Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd
|
Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
Release date: |
October 2000 |
First published: |
July 2000 |
Authors: |
Julien Green
|
Translators: |
Robin Buss
|
Dimensions: |
230 x 241 x 36mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover
|
Pages: |
752 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-7145-2985-1 |
Subtitles: |
French
|
Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
General & literary fiction >
Modern fiction
|
LSN: |
0-7145-2985-0 |
Barcode: |
9780714529851 |
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