A season in the West: A novel - Hardcover

Read, Piers Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0436410044 ISBN 13: 9780436410048

Publisher: Secker & Warburg, 1988

Synopsis

This is the story of a Czech writer who defects to the West and gets involved in an affair with the lady who has taken him under her wing. Piers Paul Reed also wrote "The Professor's Daughter" and "Upstart".

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Set in London, Read's latest novel is a morality tale reminiscent of his memorable A Married Man . Defecting from Czechoslovakia, writer Josef Birek is taken under the wing of Laura Morton, the wife of a wealthy banker, who works part-time as a translator at a foundation for dissident emigres. Shallow, discontented Laura sees her opportunity: she introduces the naive, idealistic Birek to her friends and literary contacts, invites him to move into her home and eventually begins an affair with the overwhelmed young man. Lionized by London's sophisticated social set, Birek finds himself financially and spiritually enslaved, while Laura becomes obsessed by the liaison. Basking in her self-importance and convinced that she is being very kind to Birek, she cynically exploits him. A full cast of witty and well-drawn supporting characters form the backdrop of Reid's biting comedy of manners, in which the momentum of Birek's brief celebrity and inevitable disillusionment is conveyed in a lean, spare prose that misses nothing.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Laura Morton, the bored wife of a London banker, has reached the age where she needs to dabble in either work or romance. The Comenius Foundation, which employs her as a translator, promotes Czech dissident writers; and when it (implausibly) sponsors her discovery, Josef Birek, in his application for asylum in Britain, she becomes his lover. The development of the liaison, and the many entanglements that ensue, are skillfully put together, but the story of the wide-eyed Slav adrift in the wicked West has been done before. The variation here is that Birek's childlike reactions come from his being barely more than a child in age. Read's satire is of the patented English variety, where all plot developments spring from race, class, and sex enmity. This genre has loyal adherents, who can pass over the unrelenting bigotry. Read also has name-recognition value from his best-seller Alive: A History of the Andes Survivors .
- Rob Schmieder, Boston
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Secker & Warburg
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0436410044
• ISBN 13: 9780436410048
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 238