The Dwarfs

Follows the evolving friendship of Len, an amateur mathematician who works at the Euston train station, Mark, an actor, and Virginia and Pete, a young couple struggling to define their relationship

British playwright Pinter's semi-absurdist novel of stunted lives in 1950s London is a story of friendship, love and betrayal. As in his plays, the characters often talk past one another into an existential void. The precarious equilibrium of a trio of male friends is disrupted when one of them, Pete, falls in love with Virginia. He puts her on a pedestal or, alternately, treats her as a slut or boyish pal. Advising him are Mark, a frustrated actor who blithely accepts that "everything's a calamity," and Len, who escapes his dull job in a train station through abstract mathematics and playing violin to his cat. Written in the early 1950s, Pinter's only novel was the genesis for his play of the same title; revised in 1989, the work is being published for the first time (had it been issued earlier, it would not have made his reputation). As the foursome oscillates between mistrust and communion, the dialogue veers from minimalist chatter to booming Shakespearean eloquence, with an occasional glowing line and lambent lyricism relieving long stretches of soul-searching angst.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This is a novel clearly poised on the edge of drama. It is Pinter's only novel, written in the early Fifties just before he began writing the plays for which he is so well known. (This novel was, in fact, turned into a play that was first produced in 1960.) It is a fascinating text, revolving around the lives and worries of its three main characters, and operates as a kind of study of Pinter from his own hand, as true and accurate a chronicle of his development and method as any biography could be. It is sometimes difficult to follow because it is so very "play-like," not always cluing the reader in to who's talking to whom, who's responding, etc. Yet the dialog is brilliant, cranky, and eccentric, and the narrative passages are some of the most thrillingly imaginative ever written.
- Jessica Grim, Univ. of California at Berkeley Lib.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.