The Season of Lillian Dawes: A Novel - Hardcover

Mosby, Katherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0066212723 ISBN 13: 9780066212722

Publisher: Harper, 2002

Synopsis

From the acclaimed writer whose first novel , Private Altars,, comes a story of driving lyrical force set in Manhattan in the 1950s.When he is expelled from boarding school, Gabriel Gibbs is sent to live with his older brother Spencer in New York. Rather than a punishment, this becomes an exhilarating invitation to a dazzling world, from smoking cigars at the Plaza Hotel to weekend house parties filled with tennis and cocktails. It is in this heady atmosphere -- from white-gloved Park Avenue to literary Greenwich Village -- that Gabriel first glimpses the elusive Lillian Dawes. Free-spirited and mysterious, Lillian captures the imaginations of those in "all the best circles," including both brothers. As their lives entwine, so begins the powerful and poignant unraveling of innocence.

"There is, in most lives, a defining moment, a point dividing time into before and after...." Mosby beautifully traces the trajectory of consequence that will change all three lives. The Season of Lillian Dawes is a wondrous novel that chronicles a young man's first tour of the adult world.

About this title

Review:

While Katherine Mosby's cool, feline prose is entirely her own, careful readers will hear the faint echoes of Edith Wharton and Henry James in this beguiling second novel, The Season of Lillian Dawes. In the wake of some adolescent antics at his private school, Gabriel Gibbs, a member of an extended aristocratic family in a privileged segment of society in post-World War II New York, is expelled. He is sent to live on West Ninth Street with his older brother Spencer, a poet and wit, who a female acquaintance describes as "one of those tall, charming men you know would be absolutely useless in an emergency." Here he first learns of the mysterious Lillian Dawes, whose allure, like that of Max Beerbohm's femme fatale, Zuleika Dobson, rests in part on her beauty and vivacity and in part on her perplexing air of detachment. But Lillian is not as detached as she seems. Only after her sudden disappearance from the lives of Gabriel and Spencer does her own troubling quest come to light. The Season of Lillian Dawes is a novel of distinction, with acid Salingeresque dialogue balanced by elegiac renderings of Manhattan in the 1950s. --Regina Marler

About the Author:

Katherine Mosby's previous works include a collection of poetry, The Book of Uncommon Prayer, and two novels, Private Altars and The Season of Lillian Dawes, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She lives in New York City and teaches at New York University's Stern Business School.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0066212723
• ISBN 13: 9780066212722
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288