Synopsis
Written almost completely in dialogue, Henry Green's final novel is a biting comedy of manners that exposes the deceptive difference between those who love and those who "dote." Arthur Middleton is a middle-aged member of the upper-middle class living in post-World War II London with his wife. Stuck in a passionless marriage, Arthur becomes infatuated with Annabel, a much younger woman. Their relationship sets into motion a series of intertwining affairs between five close friends less concerned with love than with their attempts to keep the other lovers apart.
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About the Author
Henry Green (1905–1973) was the pen name of Henry Vincent Yorke. Born near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, England, he was educated at Eton and Oxford and went on to become the managing director of his family’s engineering business, writing novels in his spare time. His first novel, Blindness (1926), was written while he was at Oxford. He married in 1929 and had one son, and during the Second World War served in the Auxiliary Fire Service. Between 1926 and 1952 he wrote nine novels—Blindness, Living, Party Going, Caught, Loving, Back, Concluding, Nothing, and Doting—and a memoir, Pack My Bag.
Michael Gorra is the author of, among other books, The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany and Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches English at Smith College.
Review
“The intelligence, the blazing gifts of imagery, dialogue, construction, and form, the power to feel both what can and what never can be said, give Henry Green’s work an intensity greater . . . than that of any other writer of imaginative fiction today. . . . His remains the most interesting and vital imagination in English fiction in our time.” —Eudora Welty
“The sincere and almost religious conviction of the primacy of guilt in human relations is one of Green’s most fruitful sources of inspiration, and he forcefully develops it in Doting and Nothing, his last, great, and dismally underrated novels.” —Brooke Allen, The New Criterion
“In all of [Green’s] novels we are made aware of the most profound and surprising truths about life, love and the human heart without being able to pinpoint any one page, line or moment of epiphany. To read [him] is to find oneself in the presence of rare genius, fit to sit along Woolf, Fitzgerald and Joyce on anyone’s shelf of classics. Henry Green is here to stay.” —David Wright, The Seattle Times
"Mr. Green possesses perhaps the most accurate ear of any contemporary novelist.... Doting is a masterly exercise in technique.... It has some of the best moments of comedy Mr. Green has yet written." —The Times Literary Supplement
"The formidable author...has set out to write a funny book in Doting, and he has succeeded." —John Betjeman, The Daily Telegraph
"Nothing and Doting...actually display something close to old-fashioned formal perfection." —Charles McGrath, The New York Times Book Review
"A skillful intaglio of inconstancy which is pleasantly deft and devious." —Kirkus Reviews
"And in their sheer absurdity Nothing and Doting are two of the funniest novels ever written, bringing to an almost abstract essence the humor that had always been woven through Green’s work." —The Atlantic
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Doting. By Henry Green
Seller: ThriftBooksVintage, Tukwila, WA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Dust jacket missing. First edition THUS. Shelf and handling wear to cover and binding, with general signs of previous use. Boards betray fading and nicks and other signs of wear and imperfection commensurate with age. Binding is tight and structurally sound. Pages without any extraneous marks. Sealed in plastic for shipping. Secure packaging for safe delivery. Seller Inventory # 1565562045
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Doting. By Henry Green
Seller: Wonder Book, Frederick, MD, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Good. First edition copy. . Good dust jacket. 1st American edition. Gifter's inscription on front endpage. Dust jacket price clipped. In protective mylar cover. From the collection of American book critic Michael Dirda. Dirda worked as a columnist for The Washington Post from 1978 to 2026 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his criticism. He has authored two collections of literary criticism and several works on books and reading. (Relationships, Adultery, Psychological Fiction). Seller Inventory # B13OSa-00023