Jetlag - Hardcover

Clewes, Quentin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568860080 ISBN 13: 9781568860084

Publisher: Marsilio Pub, 1995

Synopsis

The narrator, born midway across the Atlantic, offers a portrait of her family over two centuries and two continents, and describes how they were caught between cultures and changing times

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

A complex hybrid of literary styles and sensibilities, this novel deals with the role of memory in shaping identity. In a narrative that is patient, absorbing and often eloquent, a middle-aged woman traces her life and lineage in pursuit of a long-lost ``twin''-the mirror image of her childhood self. Beginning with memories of her privileged upbringing on a small, idyllic French island, the unnamed narrator embarks on a largely interior journey from her writing desk in contemporary Massachusetts, criss-crossing in her mind the ocean between Europe and America as she recounts the years before and after her birth. Along the way, she conjures and chronicles the lives and experiences of assorted relatives, as well as the childhood world of Napoleon Bonaparte on the same isle where she was raised. Clewes seems primarily concerned with location as the root of character; the tactile descriptions of landscape (``The grass was frozen and felt like sugar under my feet'') offer a sense of permanence in an otherwise ephemeral and elusive world. The characters are glimpsed in impressionistic scenes and fractured images; eccentric and haunting, most are like the narrator's distant mother, who hovers at the periphery of her daughter's memories but is never completely understood. Occasionally, Clewes's story gets lost amid overwrought descriptions and sudden, jarring leaps in place and time, but the conclusion is unexpectedly moving, as the narrator begins to enter the world beyond her study. A rich fictional memoir rife with metaphors and associative juxtapositions, Clewes's bold achievement will engage and delight the serious reader.

Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Marsilio Pub
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 1568860080
• ISBN 13: 9781568860084
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 258