But then I think of the husband in Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s much earlier book The Homemaker or even Martin in Richmal Crompton’s Family Roundabout and think “Hilary, you fool, break out of that box!” I mean really, why go searching for a son that you only intend to farm him out to someone else to take care of. I shouldn’t really fault 1940s Hilary for not living up to what we might expect today.
What else could explain the fact that despite having a big ol’ farm and plenty of money, he could only imagine taking the child if he could pawn the him off on his parents or by marrying his f*** buddy, gal pal Joyce (see there is that crass American coming through). No doubt this stereotype is the equivalent of those English depictions of Americans being loud, crass, slack-jawed, idiots.) But as I thought a little more about it I realized that Hilary was also a prisoner of his time and gender. (I know, I know…before I get hate mail from my English friends, you must forgive me my deep seated and probably unjust notion that the English are capable of an emotional detachment that can be breathtaking. Part of me just put it down to the fact that he was English.
So much so that I wondered whether Hilary had a heart at all. When he meets Jean, the boy who may or may not be his child, Hilary is smacked in the face with his own emotional ambivalence. It is in fact Hilary’s emotional confusion that provides the real meat of this book. Is the child really his? You’ll have to read the book. When he encounters a boy who might be his child, emotional confusion results. To provide a succinct, spoiler-free plot description: Hilary, an Englishman, still bereft over the death of his Polish wife at the hands of the Nazis, goes to France after World War II to find his young son. It wasn’t so bad that it really bothered me, but it did keep me from thinking that Laski was a great writer. But I felt like there were too many tidy progressions in the plot that were so obviously just meant to move things along. It was one of those books that I didn’t want to put down once I had started. I agree with them in their enthusiasm for Little Boy Lost. Many bloggers have loved this novel and commented on the fine quality of Marghanita Laski’s writing. This fantastic photo from a Flickr page belongingĮven though I very much enjoyed Little Boy Lost, I think I am going to be in the minority on this one.
0 kommentar(er)
