Griefwork: A Novel - Hardcover

Hamilton-Paterson, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374166994 ISBN 13: 9780374166991

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1995

Synopsis

In the wake of World War II, an eccentric European curator struggles to keep alive a greenhouse full of exotic, nocturnal plants, fending off financial threats to their survival and his own creeping insanity

About this title

About the Author:

James Hamilton-Paterson was educated at Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize. In addition to journalism for The Sunday Times, the Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, he has publushed poetry and two colections of short stories, The View from Mount Dog and his most recent work, The Music. The non-fiction work, Playing with Water, was followed by his first novel, Geronitus, which won a Whitbread Prize in 1989, and The Bell-Boy. On 1982 he published Seven Tenths: The Sea and its Thresholds, a blend of literature and science exploring the sea. His novel Griefwork, published in 1993, was much acclaimed, and his most recent novel, Ghosts of Manila, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Ficiton Prize in 1994. He lives in Italy and the Philppines.

From Library Journal:

In a northern European city at the close of World War II, a greenhouse flourishes, kept alive through bombardment and occupation by a dedicated if eccentric gardener named Leon. The Palm House (as it is called) is Leon's whole world-"I don't want to see the real tropics," he confides to his plants-a place he retreated to long ago when his true love proved unobtainable. But the end of the war brings changes that destroy his little world: the Royal Botanic Society, which maintains the Palm House, may be forced to sell it off; an exotic Asian princess exhorts Leon to come work for her in the "real tropics"; and Leon has wrecklessly opened his heart to a Gypsy boy he rescued from a mob. The real world thus intrudes on Leon's artificially maintained privacy, and the glass ceiling comes crashing down. Hamilton-Paterson (Ghost of Manila, LJ 10/1/94) pads out this intriguing little idea with endless rhapsodic writing, some rich and rewarding (having the plants talk actually works rather well), some so overblown that even a neophyte writer would blush. The Gypsy's final betrayal creates some real tension in an otherwise slack plot, but it seems grafted onto the novel. For larger collections.
Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0374166994
• ISBN 13: 9780374166991
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 250