The Innocent Traveller
Topaz Edgeworth, the heroine of Ethel Wilson's second novel, is a character seldom found in literary fiction. She lives 100 years, moving from rural Victorian England to 1940s Vancouver, and watches a vast family grow and die around her, all without ever having a successful love affair, marrying, or becoming involved in (or even aware of) any momentous historical events herself. What's more, she doesn't mind this too much. Instead, she just proceeds happily through her life while time takes its own course. Her friends and family live more conventional lives--marrying, falling ill, being taken up in the wars--but these events revolve around Topaz without ever quite affecting her innocence and delightful oblivion. Wilson somehow manages to maintain a style that is both breathless and meticulous throughout her novel--no mean feat. Topaz's fluid, endless babble permeates the narrative voice, to great effect: Topaz reported, smiling over her Minutes, that at the previous meeting the Minerva Club had listened to a paper on Robert Browning and that selections from that great man's less obscure poems had been read aloud. It had been decided that today's meeting should include a brief comprehensive paper on "Poets of the Elizabethan Era" by Mrs. Howard Henchcliffe who certainly had her work cut out, and that selections from the verses of Elizabethan poets would be read by Mrs. Isaacs, Mrs. Simpson, and--modestly--Miss Edgeworth. Then Aunt Topaz sat down. How she enjoyed this! While Swamp Angel has remained Wilson's best-known novel, The Innocent Traveller is by far her most original work. It can seem coy or sentimental at times, but it is never excessively so, and instead assembles a terrific story out of the minutiae of everyday life. Topaz Edgeworth is the one unforgettable character of Wilson's career, an irrepressible (and irresponsible) chatterbox who, it seems, is barely content to be imprisoned within the pages of her own story. --Jack Illingworth Author(s): Ethel Wilson. Binding Mass Market Paperback. Publisher(s): New Canadian Library. Label: New Canadian Library.
| Fabricant: | New Canadian Library |
| Numéro de la pièce: | |
| Prix le plus bas (CAD): | 149,86 $ |
Caractéristiques du produit |
|
| Auteur : | Ethel Wilson |
| Catégories de drame : | Canadian |
| Format : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Marque : | New Canadian Library |
| Title : | Title S-T |
