The Hesperides Tree - Hardcover

Mosley, Nicholas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0436205483 ISBN 13: 9780436205484

Publisher: Random House UK, 2001

Synopsis

Reminiscent in theme and style to his Whitbread Award-winning?"Hopeful Monsters," Nicholas Mosley's?"The Hesperides Tree"?tells of a young man frustrated by the inability of his two chosen courses of study--biology and literature--to adequately define the world. Baffled by several life-shaping coincidences that seem to be part of life itself, he embarks on a physical and intellectual journey in search of a girl he fell in love with years earlier. This journey leads him to a deserted island off the coast of Ireland and, perhaps, to the mythical Garden of the Hesperides, home of the Tree of Life.

About this title

About the Author:

Born in London, Mosley was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford and served in Italy during the Second World War, winning the Military Cross for bravery. He succeeded as 3rd Baron Ravensdale in 1966 and, on the death of his father on 3 December 1980, he also succeeded to the Baronetcy. His father, Sir Oswald Mosley, founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932 and was a supporter of Benito Mussolini. Sir Oswald was arrested in 1940 for his antiwar campaigning, and spent the majority of World War II in prison. As an adult, Nicholas was a harsh critic of his father in "Beyond the Pale: Sir Oswald Mosley and Family 1933-1980" (1983), calling into question his father's motives and understanding of politics. Nicholas' work contributed to the 1998 Channel 4 television programme titled 'Mosley' based on his father's life. At the end of the mini-series, Nicholas is portrayed meeting his father in prison to ask him about his national allegiance. Mosley began to stammer as a young boy, and attended weekly sessions with speech therapist Lionel Logue in order to help him overcome the speech disorder. Mosley says his father claimed never really to have noticed his stammer, but feels Sir Oswald may have been less aggressive when speaking to him than he was towards other people as a result.

From Publishers Weekly:

Mosley (Hopeful Monster) is known as a novelist of ideas, and his latest effort takes on evolution, chance, God and the Internet. An unnamed young man, 18 at the start of the novel, goes in 1998 with his father, a director of TV documentaries, and his mother (both unnamed) to a cottage on the west coast of Ireland. His father is there to verify a report that there's been some rapid evolutionary change among birds on the coast. His mother owns the cottage, which they discover is being used by the locals, perhaps for smuggling guns. The young man even witnesses a gun battle, presumably between the smugglers. Returning to England, he travels to Oxford, where he meets Edward Constantine, whose father, the wealthy Connie Constantine, has a mysterious interest in the unnamed boy; it's revealed that Connie had an affair with the boy's mother. Edward is obsessed by computers; he wants to bring down the Internet. The boy meets a feminist, Christina, and impregnates her, then goes back off to the cottage in search of whatever anchoritic delights might await him there. What he finds, however, is more romance and swashbuckling adventure. While the boy is presented as a contemporary teenager, Mosley has instilled in him the soul of some diffident Edwardian youth, rendering his thoughts in an affected style that verges on the ludicrous, as in: "I put my arm round Julie and pulled her towards me. I thought We are like the clapper and the dome of a bell, reverberations from which go off to assist sailors." Such prose doesn't teeter on the edge of parody it demands it.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House UK
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0436205483
• ISBN 13: 9780436205484
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320