Octavo, 8 1/2" tall, 277 pages, purple half-cloth. A very good, clean, sturdy hard cover with light shelf wear but foxing stains to the exterior margins of the boards; hinges and binding solid, paper just slightly yellowed. In a near fine, clean dust jacket with minor edge wear, with original price.

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Bibliographic Details

Title: An Honest Woman
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: 1971
Language: English
ISBN 10: 0394468708
ISBN 13: 9780394468709
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition.
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Weight: 10 ounces

About this title

Synopsis

An Honest Woman is an unusual and disturbing novel about the incestuous love between a father and his daughter. Set in Paris and Philadelphia, the story builds upon the childhood of O'Hare Lavin, a dark, brooding Irishman who made his fortune as a builder, and the controlling spirit of his strong and loving, yet undemonstrative mother. O'Hare had dominated his wife, son, and three daughters with a fierce puritanic power that allowed little pleasure in the world. At the opening of the novel, O'Hare has been dead for months, and his daughter Mary, the one person he really loved and who returned that love, emotionally and physically, has fled from America and the memories of her father. She is living in Paris as the mistress of an insensitive, bourgeois Frenchman. When her sisters and sister-in-law arrive in Paris, Mary thinks her family has come to convince her she should return home. However, they are there to persuade her not to accept her rightful inheritance of all of O'Hare's wealth, but rather to share it with them.

The story of the love affair between father and daughter is understood through the gentleness and honesty of Mary's character and the self-recriminations and guilt that plagued O'Hare.

The surrealistic atmosphere is intensified by the turmoil of the general strike in Paris, the haunting memories of the past, with its dark, strange love, and an intervening love affair with a young Greek student that determines Mary's future.

In his fourth novel, Jack Dunphy has created a fascinating world of the Lavin family, and has explored an unusual love and its acceptance by the other members of the family.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Store Description

Avenue Victor Hugo Books specialize in first editions of the best in fiction, history, biography, poetry, drama, and essay, as well as the good items which happen to come our way in other subjects. Genre literature such as Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, and Westerns will remain of special interest to us. We also carry many collectible magazines, including TIME, LIFE, National Geographic, and Playbill. Our catalogue features careful, considered assessments of all of our stock. We are not flippers selling books by the pound. Instead, we try to limit our stock to books in a condition we'd be proud to place on our personal bookshelves. Books are something to be cherished, so that's what we do. After years of running our bookstore on Newbury Street in Boston's Back Bay, our store has moved. We are now located in Lee, New Hampshire, less than 10 minutes from the University of New Hampshire. Our store is open from 10am to 6pm every Saturday.

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Avenue Victor Hugo Books LLC
1 Lee Hill Rd, Lee, NH, 03861, U.S.A.

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