Cast in Doubt (Masks) - Softcover

Tillman, Lynne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852423404 ISBN 13: 9781852423407

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 1993

Synopsis

When Horace decides to search for Helen, his investigation takes him (and the reader) to unexpected and weirdly pleasurable places. "Tillman's intelligence and sophistication have led her toward a quality I can only call grace. Like Stein, Ashbury, and James this book could be read over and over, each time with deepening delight and appreciation."--Peter Straub

About this title

About the Author:

Lynne Tillman was born in New York City where she now lives. She is the author of Absence Makes the Heart, Cast in Doubt, Haunted Houses and Motion Sickness (Serpent's Tail) and The Madame Realism Complex. She is a contributor to many journals and magazines including Bomb, Art in America, The Guardian and Voice Literary Supplement and is co-director and writer of the feature film Committed.

From Kirkus Reviews:

``We were a ragtag band of inhibited outsiders, each a secret and keeping secrets from the others. And ourselves, I suspect.'' That's how the narrator of this puzzle novel by Tillman (Haunted Houses, 1987; Motion Sickness, 1991) describes the expatriate community that surrounds him on Crete. His name is Horace (or so we're led to believe until we're told in the closing pages, ``Change the name and you are the subject of the story''). He's an elderly homosexual living with a young Greek gigolo, and a writer of crime novels. When Horace develops a strange, largely platonic fixation on a new arrival--a pretty girl named Helen, who, rumor has it, prowled the streets of downtown Manhattan like a black cat and now picks up sailors at the harbor--his penchant for sleuthing comes in handy. The girl disappears, and Horace is compelled to search for her among a band of gypsies in the south of the island. All he turns up is her diary, full of quotes from Patti Smith and odd jottings like ``OEDIPUS WRECKS.'' It disappoints him, but later his old buddy from Harvard, Gwen, enlightens him by explaining that in Helen he was looking for himself. ``How tiresome'' he finds it--that he has never really understood anyone because he can't see outside himself. Unlike Horace's, the author's vision is clear--she's produced a handful of sharply drawn secondary characters and a very interior narrative voice that teasingly commands. But she backs away from sense and message by riddling with matters ontological, resulting in a novel that is by turns frustrating and amusing, if slight. Beach reading for the John Hawkes set. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 1852423404
• ISBN 13: 9781852423407
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 244