Mr. Beluncle - A Novel

Informationen zum Autor Victor Sawdon Pritchett  (1900–1997) was an extraordinarly prolific and versatile man of letters! widely regarded as one of the greatest stylist in the English language. Darin Strauss  is the bestselling author of several books. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction writing and numerous other awards! Strauss has seen his work translated into fourteen languages and published in more than twenty countries. He is a clinical associate professor of writing at New York University! and he lives with his wife and children in Brooklyn. Klappentext "Like most great comedy!” writes Darin Strauss in his Introduction! "Mr. Beluncle makes sport of the Stuffed Shirt! the Hypocritical Pious Gentleman! and the Tyrant! as well as the Big Spender-and all these descriptions fit a single character: Mr. Beluncle himself.” One of V. S. Pritchett's most enduring characters! Mr. Beluncle is narcissistic! sanctimonious! and self-indulgent! yet despite these flaws he is undeniably compelling. Readers who follow this quirky British furniture salesman on his seemingly ordinary escapades-shopping for ridiculously expensive houses! attending services at his peculiar church! presiding over a tumultuous family meal-are in for a delightful and disquieting ride. Poignant! hilarious! and utterly unforgettable Mr. Beluncle is an ideal introduction to one of the English language's most gifted authors. I   Twenty-five minutes from the centre of London the trees lose their towniness, the playing fields, tennis courts and parks are as fresh as lettuce, and the train appears to be squirting through thousands of little gardens. Here was Boystone before its churches and its High Street were burned out and before its roofs were stripped off a quarter of a mile at a time. It had its little eighteenth-century face—the parish church, the alms-houses, the hotel, the Hall—squeezed by the rolls and folds of pink suburban fat. People came out of the train and said the air was better—Mr Beluncle always did—it was an old town with a dormitory encampment, and a fizz and fuss of small private vegetation.   The Beluncles were always on the look out for better air. Mr Beluncle moved them out to Boystone from the London fume of Perse Hill when Henry was fourteen and had a bad accent picked up at half a dozen elementary schools.   “Aim high,” said Mr Beluncle, “and you’ll hit the mark.”   He wrote to six of the most expensive Public Schools in England and read the prospectuses in the evening to his family, treating them as a kind of poetry; blew up when he saw what the fees were, said, “Every week I pick up the paper and see some boy from Eton or Harrow has been sent to prison, dreadful thing when you think what it cost their fathers,” and sent his boys to Boystone Grammar School.   The Beluncle boys lifted their noses appreciatively. The air was notably better than at Perse Hill Road. They were shy, reserved and modest boys who kept away from one another in school hours and who rarely came home together. When they saw one another, they exchanged deep signals out of a common code of seriousness and St Vitus’s dance. “We are singular,” they twitched. “No one understands us. We have a trick up our sleeves, but it is not time to play it.” They separated and carried on with their shyness which took the form of talking their heads off.   The Beluncles talked with the fever of a secret society.   O’Malley was the frightening master at Boystone School. There was always silence when he came scraping one sarcastic foot into the room, showing his small teeth with the grin of one about to feast off human vanity.   He was a man of fifty with a head like an otter’s on which the hair was drying and dying. He had a dry, hay-like moustache, flattened Irish nostrils. He walked with small, pedantic, waltzing steps, as though he had a hook pulling a...

Product details

• Authors: V S Pritchett
• Publisher: Modern Library PRH US
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 04.01.2005
• EAN: 9780812973792
• ISBN: 978-0-8129-7379-2
• No. of pages: 336
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 203 mm x 18 mm