The Understanding of Jenner Ransfield

329 pages. Cover worn. Name cut out of ffepJenner Ransfield, a man endowed with a brilliant academic mind, personal magn etism, but no self-control, tormented by demons of Laurentian sexuality and Calv inist upbringing, fumes out his existence on a farm in Someset, teaching at an A gricultural College, and sporadically tyrannizing his family - his sad, suppress ed wife Elspeth, who lives inside a romantic ballad and thinks of Jenner as her demon lover, and his two extraordinary children - May Margaret who carves wonder s in wood that no man must see, and Robin who lives to keep the World Wide Web o ut of the Devil's hands. Into this dark world beams Theodora Potts, blond curls, white smile, pretty and an Australian veterinary scientist, who knows it all. S he intends to study the harvesting of bull semen with the great Dr Ransfield, bu t nothing goes according to her plan, from the moment there slides into her life and her bed Fergal, an urban warrrior whose special form of protest is to hang naked in tree-tops. The cast is now complete for a black comedy of almost Shakes pearean richness.