|
|
Lädt ... Wives and Lovers (Original 1954; 1954. Auflage)| 33 | 1 | 731,487 | 
(3.5) | Keine | A sincere and compassionate novel about the complications of married life, and the love, loathing, pain, loyalty, disappointments and friendship that grow out of a marriage Channel City, California, is a an average coastal town where everyone is doing their best to get by and be respectable, from the sun-grizzled fishermen on the wharf to the perfectly coifed society wives to the over-fed gophers who plague every middle-class garden. But in the hot summer of 1954, one unhappy man's extramarital affair turns the community on its head. Hazel Anderson, a dental assistant, is a contentedly divorced forty-something whose ex-husband, George, runs the town's wharf bar. Hazel worries about George, who is smitten with a much younger woman, Ruby, who won't have anything to do with him, and Hazel thinks Ruby is hiding secrets of her own. The dentist Hazel assists, Gordon Foster, works hard to support his wife and three children in their middle-class lifestyle, but he can never satisfy his wife, Elaine, who has always resented being married to a dentist instead of a "real" doctor. All of these relationships become tangled when henpecked Gordon's romantic indiscretion comes to light. Here, in this sweet, sad, and incisive literary novel, Margaret Millar accomplishes the same feat as she has with her award-winning crime fiction by offering readers a fascinating snapshot of life as it was, not life as we like to remember it having been.… (mehr) |
▾Empfehlungen von LibraryThing ▾Diskussionen (Über Links) Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. ▾Reihen und Werk-Beziehungen ▾Auszeichnungen und Ehrungen
|
|
| Gebräuchlichster Titel |
|
| Originaltitel |
|
| Alternative Titel |
|
| Ursprüngliches Erscheinungsdatum |
|
| Figuren/Charaktere |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. | |
|
| Wichtige Schauplätze |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. | |
|
| Wichtige Ereignisse |
|
| Zugehörige Filme |
|
| Epigraph (Motto/Zitat) |
|
| Widmung |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. For Lydia and Don Freeman  | |
|
| Erste Worte |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. In hot weather Hazel liked to sit in the dental chair. | |
|
| Zitate |
|
| Letzte Worte |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. | |
|
| Hinweis zur Identitätsklärung |
|
| Verlagslektoren |
|
| Werbezitate von |
|
| Originalsprache |
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. | |
|
| Anerkannter DDC/MDS |
|
| Anerkannter LCC |
|
▾Literaturhinweise Literaturhinweise zu diesem Werk aus externen Quellen.  Wikipedia auf Englisch
Keine ▾Buchbeschreibungen A sincere and compassionate novel about the complications of married life, and the love, loathing, pain, loyalty, disappointments and friendship that grow out of a marriage Channel City, California, is a an average coastal town where everyone is doing their best to get by and be respectable, from the sun-grizzled fishermen on the wharf to the perfectly coifed society wives to the over-fed gophers who plague every middle-class garden. But in the hot summer of 1954, one unhappy man's extramarital affair turns the community on its head. Hazel Anderson, a dental assistant, is a contentedly divorced forty-something whose ex-husband, George, runs the town's wharf bar. Hazel worries about George, who is smitten with a much younger woman, Ruby, who won't have anything to do with him, and Hazel thinks Ruby is hiding secrets of her own. The dentist Hazel assists, Gordon Foster, works hard to support his wife and three children in their middle-class lifestyle, but he can never satisfy his wife, Elaine, who has always resented being married to a dentist instead of a "real" doctor. All of these relationships become tangled when henpecked Gordon's romantic indiscretion comes to light. Here, in this sweet, sad, and incisive literary novel, Margaret Millar accomplishes the same feat as she has with her award-winning crime fiction by offering readers a fascinating snapshot of life as it was, not life as we like to remember it having been. ▾Bibliotheksbeschreibungen Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. ▾Beschreibung von LibraryThing-Mitgliedern
| Zusammenfassung in Haiku-Form |
|
|
Aktuelle DiskussionenKeine Google Books — Lädt ... |
1
If you come to this this book expecting a hook and an immediately engaging plot, you'll be frustrated. Wives and Lovers is set of interwoven character studies and a sociological portrait of a fairly wealthy small city in mid-century California. The value of the book lies in Millar's exceptional depth of insight, the richness and complexity of her characters, and the eloquence and grace of her writing. You have to slow down to read this one, and it's well worth it.
The primary characters are Gordon Foster, the dentist; his assistant Hazel Anderson; Hazel's ex-husband, George; Gordon's wife, Elaine; Gordon's lover, Ruby; and Hazel's housemate Ruth. The book also includes a number of richly drawn minor characters, including the boardinghouse landlady, Carrie Freeman, and the Superior Court Judge, Anton Bowridge. With the exception of the older Bowridge and the young Ruby, all of the characters are middle-aged, and all are working through the adjustments of midlife, recalibrating hopes and attitudes after finding the lives they had expected didn't pan out.
Mrs. Freeman's attitude at the arrival of her new tennant, Ruby, sums up the weariness and wariness many of the middle-aged characters are struggling against: "She peered down at the car with the look of chronic suspicion that landladies acquire after years of people."
Millar creates a sharp contrast between the misery of those who refuse to forgive, and the grace of those who put in the hard work of understanding and forgiveness. She probes each character in turn and shows how the rigid and intolerant are psychologically incapable of joy or even happiness, how they are toxic to those around them, not just creating but also compounding their own troubles and the troubles of the world.
This novel would not--could not--be published today under a mystery imprint. It's literature with a capital L, and not the precious or pretentious kind. It simply examines the many facets and ordinary characters of a world we already see and reveals in it a depth and richness we rarely take the time to discover. There's too much in here to absorb in a single reading, so this one is on my list to read again. (