The Needle's Eye.

New York, NY Bantam Books: Windstone, 1982. Mass Market Paperback First Ed thus; First Printing indicated. First Ed thus; First Printing indicated. Very Good+ in Wraps: shows indications of very light use: just a touch of wear to extremities; mildest rubbing to wrapper covers; faint creasing at the backstrip for the first portion of the text; pages have tanned somewhat; former owner's first name and date at front endpaper; binding shows slight lean, but remains secure; text clean. A clean, sturdy, presentable copy. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 12mo. 368pp. Mass Market Paperback. This is an excellent book. It may be that it's genesis was a formula: a bright man from a deprived background fulfills his mother's ambitions by going to Oxford and having a legal career, and seeks to escape the pressure of his background by marrying someone who symbolizes freedom from social and financial anxiety; he meets a woman not particularly bright, from a wealthy background whose parents had no interest in her, who suffers from having been subject to embittered and puritanical servants, who gives away her money, marries someone who symbolizes social stigma, in search of values independent of financial and social ones. He sticks to his unhappy marriage, is free of anxiety, but seems to have virtually no pleasure in other people including his children. She divorces her husband and lives in squalor, but loves her children and finds great pleasure in her lower class friends and neighbours. The reason this formulaic starting point works out so well is two-fold. First, the author sets these people into real places and times, which are vividly recognizable, an incredibly richly described, closely observed world. Second, the events that unfold are anything but formulaic, rather they are allowed to follow their own logic, as the author's imagination dictates. There is a considerable if restrained reporting of the inner lives of the two main characters, and that is probably hard going for some readers, but as things progress, the characters deepen, becoming more vivid, convincing and charming. The contrast between what the reader knows of the characters' thoughts and what they surmise about each others inner lives is particularly interesting. With views in passing of numerous eccentric and sharply observed secondary characters, and extraordinary evocations of Southern English occasions and locations, this is a brilliant expression of the human condition - at least as it was in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century. It is also leavened with a number of scenes that made me laugh out loud, waking my wife in bed beside me.