Folly - Softcover

Susan Minot

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0749396113 ISBN 13: 9780749396114

Publisher: Minerva, 1994

Synopsis

From the author of "Monkeys" and "Lust and Other Stories", this novel encapsulates the experience of misguided love.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Minot earned high praise for her first novel, Monkeys . Here she again displays a brilliant gift for loading frugal prose with emotion and innuendo. Folly penetrates a staid upper-class scene in the WW I years, centering on pretty Lilian Eliot, well-behaved and square-chinned, "a regular girl from Boston." Schooled in the numbing restraints of caste and gender, Lilian discovers her own romantic ardors and falls in love with an unreliable charmer, New Yorker Walter Vail. From overseas service Walter writes one offhand letter about the war's havoc, and stays on to marry a Frenchwoman. Lilian accepts the muffled role society prescribes for her; she marries big, slow-moving Gilbert Finch, whose endearing nature turns out to mask grave defects. Soon a mother of three, Lilian sees her life as "airtight, all the seams sewn up," and endures the genteel descent down the years in a round of weddings, lunches, and shopping, a life sometimes illuminated by painful glimmers of self-knowledge as hope becomes a memory. Then one day Walter returns, unencumbered. The novel's cautionary characters who stray from the norm include Lilian's suicidal friend Irene, her parasitic brother Arthur--a writer--and her free-spirited old Aunt Tizzy, rouged and eccentric. Chapter headings--e.g., "Some shocking news," or "A guilt between them"--evoke the fictional style of the period; Minot's terse purity of voice achieves a canny, ironic distancing, yet manages seductively engages the reader in her heroine's quandary. Paperback rights to Pocket; BOMC and QPB alternates; author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Lillian Eliot is the product of Brahmin Boston, whose traditions and socially correct attitudes have been instilled in her. She has been cast in the mold. Yet at times she longs to break free, to be someone different. Lillian sees that her choice of a husband will determine her future, but she finds herself most comfortable with what is familiar and marries accordingly. Later in life she is again faced with the choice--to break free or stay. In making her choice, Lillian finally discovers herself. This is a book of the inner workings of the heart and the mind. In elegant, eloquent prose, Minot captures the essence and the impact of life's decisions. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/92.
- Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Providence
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Minerva
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0749396113
• ISBN 13: 9780749396114
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 292