Beloved Stranger - Softcover

Boylan, Clare

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349112630 ISBN 13: 9780349112633

Publisher: Time Warner Books Uk, 2000

Synopsis

Dick and Lily have been married for fifty years, and Lily finally believes that marriage is like an old tune you take for granted but find yourself whistling when you're happy. Until the night she wakes to find her husband's pyjama'd bottom poking out from under the bed. He claims there's an intruder and he's got him in his sights. When she turns on the light he backs out, holding a shotgun. 'Bugger got away when you created a diversion' he says. The comic incident marks the start of Dick's terrifying plunge into insanity. He enters a world of imaginary enemies, fantastic opportunities, sexual rivals. For an old-fashioned wife who accepted her partner for better or worse, there is nowhere left to turn except to her only daughter. Ruth, who has turned her back on emotional commitment in favour of good sex with good friends is now forced to penetrate the conspiratorial and chaotic web of her parents' marriage. Part love story, part thriller, BELOVED STRANGER is also, an analysis of marriage - a changeless institution in a vastly altered world, a private dictatorship where love and fear, tenderness or tyranny remain hidden at its heart.

About this title

About the Author:

Clare Boylan was the author of five novels and three volumes of short stories. Her last novel, ROOM FOR A SINGLE LADY, was published by Little, Brown in September 1997. She died in May 2006.

From Publishers Weekly:

This rich, compelling novel is a domestic tragicomedy in which the details are as crucial as in a mystery story. During 50 years of married life in the same Dublin neighborhood, Dick Butler has provided for his wife, Lily. Despite Dick's occasional instances of "madness," Lily has always been deeply devoted to him, so she can barely bring herself to ask about the large checks for cash he's suddenly writing when he still considers central heating in their home too expensive. Their only daughter, Ruth, an architect, is single by choice and an ardent feminist who encourages her mother to stop playing a submissive role. When Lily awakens one night to find Dick under the bed--armed with a shotgun and convinced he has an intruder in his sights--she is not unduly alarmed; she rationalizes that it was probably only a dream. But after Dick's behavior becomes more bizarre, Ruth consults a young professor of psychiatry, Tim Walcott, and he persuades Dick to submit to tests that confirm his emotional distress as bipolar disorder. The action balances the farcical (when Dick's at home, he sells their new mattress for more than he paid for it) and the pathetic (when he's hospitalized, Lily is so lonely she makes a pet out of a mouse). Ruth, meanwhile, tries to comfort her mother and sort out her feelings for Walcott, who befriends both women. There's a suspenseful sequence of crises as Dick's condition, depicted with frankness and humor, deteriorates into full-blown manic depression, and the story turns on Lily's loving vigil. As in John Bayley's Elegy for Iris, Boylan's scrutiny of the intimate details and travails of an enduring marriage gives depth and vitality to an engrossing story, the basis for which Boylan (Home Rule) found in her own father's mental illness. (Apr. 1)Forecast: Despite its frank depiction of a syndrome that afflicts the elderly, this novel is a natural for handselling, a task made easier because of Boylan's ability to infuse gallows humor into her very engaging narrative. If booksellers get behind this title, it should thrive.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Time Warner Books Uk
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0349112630
• ISBN 13: 9780349112633
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 309