Relative Successes - Softcover

Barker, A. L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571256171 ISBN 13: 9780571256174

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2011

Synopsis

An awkward and solitary boy at school, James Jessel is surprised to find himself befriended by the impetuous, self-assured Waldo Klein, and bemused by Waldo's invitation to spend the holidays with him and his mother (a 'ravishing beauty', warns Waldo) in the south of France. On the Klein's ramshackle farm in the hills of Provence, Jessel experiences the single most important event - or sensation - of his life. The voluptuous and sensual Mrs Klein is a creature whose sexuality and presence leaves Jessel dumbfounded. He is entranced, and senses a magic he has never known before. When, many years later, Waldo disappears leaving no clue to his whereabouts, Jessel's ordered world is overturned once more. If he is ever to know magic again, he must find Waldo, and so he returns to France to confront his past - and, indeed, his future.

About this title

About the Author:

A. L. Barker (1918-2002) was a short story writer and novelist. Born in St Paul's Cray, Kent, she lived in the same milieu where London borders on Kent and Surrey, for the rest of her life. As her Oxford DNB entry says it was 'the chief setting for her work, which often seemed to partake of the quotidian mysteriousness and even abandonment of these areas.' Her first selection of short stories, Innocents, won the Somerset Maugham award in 1947. Of her short stories, Robert Nye has written, 'stories as carefully composed as poems, quiet and delicate and reserved perhaps, but oddly lingering in the mind.' Although a stranger to commercial success, she never wanted for admirers, Jane Gardam, Francis King, Auberon Waugh, Evelyn Waugh, Rebecca West, John Sutherland, Deborah Moggach, Ronald Blythe, Susan Hill, A. S. Byatt, Adam Mars-Jones, Nina Bawden and Victoria Glendinning being just some of them. A. L. Barker deserves to be better known. Faber Finds is proud to be reissuing her entire oeuvre, six volumes of short stories - Innocents, Novelette with Other Stories, Femina Real, Life Stories, No Words of Love and Element of Doubt - and thirteen novels - Apology for a Hero, A Case Examined, The Joy-Ride and After, Lost Upon the Roundabouts, The Middling, John Brown's Body, Source of Embarrassment, A Heavy Feather, Relative Successes, The Gooseboy, The Woman Who Talked to Herself, Zeph and The Haunt.

From Publishers Weekly:

James Jessel was an unappealing child, to his parents, his teachers and himself. His 16th summer, spent in the south of France with schoolmate Waldo Klein, has provided him with the most powerful memories of his youth, all centering around the voluptuous, sensual, idle Mrs. Klein. James and Waldo maintain their acquaintance and 50 years later, after Waldo disappears, James returns to Antibes with his wife, searching for his friend and for meaning. James's memories are revivified but they disclose no secrets. He meets a disillusioned young hitchhiker; his wife picks up a strange couple; and he does see Waldo, working in a seedy circus. That Waldo has returned to this place brings James some consolation. This elliptical novel by a veteran British author offers little in the way of story but is marked by acute observations and ruthless unsentimentality.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0571256171
• ISBN 13: 9780571256174
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 198