We Think the World of You - Softcover

Ackerley, J. R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140115544 ISBN 13: 9780140115543

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1988

Synopsis

This powerful short novel, with its extraordinary mixture of acute social realism and dark fantasy, was described by J. R. Ackerley himself as "a fairy tale for adults." Frank, the narrator, is a middle-aged civil servant, intelligent, acerbic, self-righteous, angry. He is in love with Johnny, a young, married, working-class man with a sweetly easy-going nature. When Johnny is sent to prison for committing a petty theft, Frank gets caught up in a struggle with Johnny's wife and parents for access to him. Their struggle finds a strange focus in Johnny's dog--a beautiful but neglected German shepherd named Evie. And it is she, in the end, who becomes the improbable and undeniable guardian of Frank's inner world.

We Think the World of You is J. R. Ackerley's only novel, and like all his work it is remarkable for its unconventionality and its power to surprise. In his brilliant memoirs My Father and Myself and My Dog Tulip, Ackerley revealed the fantasies that had shaped the facts his life. And in We Think the World of You he tells a subtle, funny, ultimately devastating story about bitterness and desire and the disappointment that can hide behind a mask of fulfillment. This unforgettable book is one of the outstanding contributions to postwar British fiction, and perhaps its author's finest achievement.

About this title

About the Author

J.R. Ackerley (1896–1967) was for many years the literary editor of the BBC magazine The Listener. His works include three memoirs, Hindoo Holiday, My Dog Tulip, and My Father and Myself, and a novel, We Think the World of You (all available as New York Review Books).

P.N. Furbank is the author of nine books, including biographies of Samuel Butler, Italo Svevo, and E.M. Forster.

Review

“The book is both breezy and sad. Ackerley’s books are candid confessions of a good friend, full of small, hilarious surprises.”
—Peter Terzian, Out

“The wife gets to visit the jail. The mother gets to adopt one of the children. The stepfather gets to beat the dog. Is there nothing for the middle-aged gay lover? At first Ackerley’s novel seems to be a comedy about in-laws, and Frank’s indignation to be his only and inadequate weapon against a family that knows and doesn’t know who he is, however willing they are to take his money. But then Frank notices a member of the family as generous and jealous as he is, and as beautiful and as vital as his imprisoned lover. He turns all his malice to the project of freeing the dog, but what he achieves turns out to be darker and stranger than liberation.”
—Caleb Crain

“The writer of this book belongs to that rare and interesting group of writers who contrive, without ever intending to do so, to make an art of their silences. What he does produce is like nothing that has ben written before or since.” --The Times Literary Supplement

“A hugely funny book.” --The Glasgow Herald
“A beautifully and superbly executed novel. . . .Each page seems to glow with what is written between the lines as well as with what is written on them. What a book this is!” --New Statesman

J.R. Ackerley’s We Think the World of You charts an unlikely course of a love affair.... The results are moving and unexpected. The hinge upon which the novel swings—and shuts—is that in matters of the heart, you must be careful what you wish for.
—Open Letters Monthly

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140115544
• ISBN 13: 9780140115543
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 158