Spadework - Softcover

Findley, Timothy

3.22

1,153 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006393071 ISBN 13: 9780006393078

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2003

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Spadework was Timothy Findley’s final novel before his death in June 2002. An electric word play of infidelity and morality, it is fitting that the novel is set in Stratford, the town where Findley began his career as an actor. Now in a PerennialCanada edition, Spadework will join Findley’s wonderful body of work, a collection to be enjoyed again and again.

Known for his gift in plumbing the depths of the human condition, Findley digs deep in Spadework with a cast of characters, each one motivated by addictions and ambitions, each one very alone. Set in the steamy summer of 1998, events such as the Lewinsky scandal, a hostage-taking in Peru and a severed phone line connect―and disconnect―a story singed by lust, power, adultery and ambition. A bestseller in cloth and a smash hit in mass market, Spadework’s Perennial edition will appeal to Findley’s legion of literary fans.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Timothy Findley's recent titles include Pilgrim, which was a finalist for the Giller Prize and his first published in the United States; You Went Away; Dust to Dust; and The Piano Man's Daughter. He was also the author of the acclaimed Headhunter, Not Wanted on the Voyage, Famous Last Words, and The Wars. His most recent play, Elizabeth Rex, won the Governor General's Award for Drama. His work has won innumerable honors, including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Edgar Award. He was the only three-time recipient of the Canadian Authors Association Award, bestowed for fiction, nonfiction, and drama. He was an Officer of the Order of Canada and, in France, Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He split his time between homes in Stratford, Ontario and the south of France. He died in France in June 2002 at the age of 71.

From Publishers Weekly:

Bestselling Canadian writer Findley, whose stylish and complexly plotted novels have acquired an appreciative audience, here departs from his usual dark scenarios to produce an erotically powered narrative in which all's well that ends well. The setting is the town of Stratford, Ontario, home of the Shakespeare Festival. Findley (Pilgrim) knows this world well, and he conveys it with atmospheric detail. The inadequacy of mere ambition, even when one has talent, is the lesson learned by rising actor Griffin Kincaid, when he realizes that luck and fate can also play havoc with dreams of theatrical stardom. After Kincaid refuses a sexual proposition by his manipulative homosexual director, Jonathan Crawford, he is denied the roles he'd been promised. Griffin's wife, Jane, a Louisiana set designer for the theater, is bitter because Griffin refuses to let her use her substantial inherited income to buy a home in which to raise their seven-year-old son. When, by chance, her gardener cuts a buried phone line, dramatic events ensue. The telephone repairman is a young Polish immigrant, inarticulate but strangely beautiful, and Jane is aroused. Attracted to the repairman yet worried by Griffin's inattention, Jane suspects that her husband is having an affair with an actress. Then she realizes he has capitulated to Jonathan's demands. Despite being a sexual bully, Jonathan is acutely sensitive to Shakespeare, and his insights are enlightening. A hopeful ending provides uplift, but does not, unfortunately, compensate for shopworn characterization and the overdone Tennessee Williams atmosphere. For Findley, this is a curiously slapdash performance.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.