A Far Cry from Kensington -

Muriel Spark

New Directions

2000

192 páginas

6h 24m

ISBN-13: 9780811214575

Set on the crazier fringes of 1950s literary London, A Far Cry from Kensington is a delight, hilariously portraying love, fraud, death, evil, and transformation.
Mrs. Hawkins, the majestic narrator of A Far Cry from Kensington, takes us well in hand, and leads us back to her threadbare years in postwar London. There, as a fat and much admired young war widow, she spent her days working for a mad, near-bankrupt publisher ("of very good books") and her nights dispensing advice at her small South Kensington rooming-house. At work and at home Mrs. Hawkins soon uncovered evil: shady literary doings and a deadly enemy; anonymous letters, blackmail, and suicide. With aplomb, however, Mrs. Hawkins confidently set about putting things to order, little imagining the mayhem which would ensue. Now decades older, thin, successful, and delighted with life in Italy -- quite a far cry from Kensington -- Mrs. Hawkins looks back to all those dark doings, and recounts how her own life changed forever. She still, however, loves to give advice: "It's easy to get thin. You eat and drink the same as always, only half....I offer this advice without fee; it is included in the price of this book." A masterwork by "Britain's greatest living novelist" (Sunday Telegraph, 1999), A Far Cry from Kensington has been hailed as "outstanding" (The Observer) and "wickedly and adroitly executed" (The New York Times). "Far Cry is, among other things, a comedy that holds a tragedy as an egg-cup holds an egg" (Philadelphia Inquirer).

Resenhas (1)

4 (Muito bom)

This was my first Muriel Spark. There will be others. For A FAR CRY FROM KENSINGTON is wonderful prose. This is what I would call a quietly funny book that falls within a long line of English women writers with uncanny means of observation, particularly for the odd and unpredictable little things of daily life. If you enjoy the works of Barbara Pym, Bernice Rubens, Penelope Lively among others, Muriel Spark is also for you. In addition this book permits an interesting reminescense of life in London in the years immediately after WWII, without the traps of emotional nostalgia. This is a distant and yet warm view of the time. A cool book!