The Pyramid - Softcover

Golding, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571192521 ISBN 13: 9780571192526

Publisher: Faber and Faber Limited, 1997

Synopsis

Oliver is eighteen, and wants to enjoy himself before going to university. But this is the 1920s, and he lives in Stilbourne, a small English country town, where everyone knows what everyone else is getting up to, and where love, lust and rebellion are closely followed by revenge and embarrassment. Written with great perception and subtlety, The Pyramid is Golding's funniest and most light-hearted novel, which probes the painful awkwardness of the late teens, and all the tragedy and farce of life in a small community

About this title

About the Author

William Golding (1911-1993) was a Booker and Nobel Prize-winning author, best known for his first novel, Lord of the Flies, published originally in 1954 and adapted for film in 1963. His other works include The Inheritors (1955), Pincher Martin (1956), The Spire (1964), Rites of Passage (1980), The Double Tongue (published posthumously in 1995) a now rare volume, Poems (1934) and the essay collections The Hot Gates and A Moving Target. Golding was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford. Before his writing career, Golding was a schoolmaster. He was also a keen actor, musician and small-boat sailor. In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Review

Yet once more, o ye laurels? No, not from dissertation writers and literary quarterlies, who may not know quite what to make of Golding's latest. A careful, subdued story of one young man's passage from adolescence to reminiscence, from the 20's through the 40's, from the village of Stillbourne to Oxford and back, The Pyramid builds itself with dogged detachment and gradual accretions of meaning. Oliver, son of a limp pharmacist, has a few initiatory bouts with a bitter young town sexpot; an unwilling romp in the town musical show; and (the best part of the three) violin lessons from Miss Dawlish, a town eccentric beguiled by her driving teacher. Demands are made on this unresponsive, not terribly interesting hero, who tells it all in a first person sometimes arch, sometimes fine. If there's an allegory here, it's less cut and dried and ready for exegesis than is usual with Golding. Way of All Flesh rendered by Updike, the labellers might say...meanwhile, it can and will be read at face value, no great shakes but a pleasant climb. (Kirkus Reviews)

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber and Faber Limited
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571192521
• ISBN 13: 9780571192526
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224