Small superficial nick along front fold of dustcover into book ; Red and white hardboards with sharp tips and bright purple embossing on spine, very clean, no markings, tight - near fine condition ; 8.3 X 5.7 X 0.9 inches; 187 pages.

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Bibliographic Details

Title: Beginning of Spring
Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
Publication Date: 1989
Language: English
ISBN 10: 0805009817
ISBN 13: 9780805009811
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition.
Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good-

About this title

Synopsis

Nellie Reed disappears from her home at 22 Lipka Street, and her husband Frank--suspecting she has returned to England--must raise their three young children with the help of beautiful Lisa Ivanovna

Reviews

Booker Prize-winner Fitzgerald ( Offshore ; Innocence ) reveals here the depth of a distinct and imaginative talent to amuse. Set in Moscow in the spring of 1913, the story concerns an English household that has fallen apart with the unexpected flight of Nellie Reid, a good and proper wife and heretofore devoted mother of three young children. (Fitzgerald is especially good at very droll children.) Nellie's husband, Frank, must carry on with his family and printing business while holding out hope for her return. A mysterious young woman from the countryside--she may be a dryad--is engaged to care for the children, and the plot, such as it is, takes many unexpected turns. But one doesn't read Fitzgerald for plot structure so much as for her sheer powers of invention: her novel raises more questions than it means to answer. Rich in subtle characterizations, wit and wonderfully textured prose, Fitzgerald's seventh novel succeeds in evoking the very essence of life one long-ago spring at 22 Lipka Street.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Set in Moscow in 1913, this tale chronicles several months in the life of Frank Reid, who is mysteriously deserted by his wife and must engage the simple peasant girl Lisa Ivanova to care for his three small children. Reid plods along in a remarkably mundane existence, relating to everyone with an amazing, unflagging apathy. Even an armed student radical who breaks into his shop and shoots at him cannot stir him to action. Lisa, to her credit, manages to stir him briefly to passion. The sole bright spot in this otherwise bleak, boring saga is Reid's hilariously precocious daughter, Dolly, whose abrupt, insightful comments are priceless. In this story, resolved anticlimactically in the last line of the text, there is very little spring, but a lot of grim, eternal winter.
- Ronald L. Coombs, SUNY Health Science Ctr. at Brooklyn Lib.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Squeaky Trees Books
ME, U.S.A.

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