The Hanging Garden
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Indisputably one of the century's greatest writers." —Annie Proulx
"The Hanging Garden is a novel for our time--a story about parentless children, mistreated by a world that, by its lights, intends no harm but nonetheless does enduring damage." —The New York Times Book Review (cover review, 05/26/13)
From the Nobel Prize–winning author of The Eye of the Storm comes a vivid, visceral tale of childhood friendship and sexual awakening from beyond the echoes of World War II.
Sydney, Australia, 1942. Two children, on the cusp of adolescence, have been spirited away from the war in Europe and given shelter in a house on Neutral Bay, taken in by the charity of an old widow who wants little to do with them. The boy, Gilbert, has escaped the Blitz. The girl, Eirene, lost her father in a Greek prison. Left to their own devices, the children forge a friendship of startling honesty, forming a bond of uncommon complexity that they sense will shape their destinies for years to come.
Patrick White's posthumously discovered novel, The Hanging Garden, which represents the first part of what was intended to be his final masterpiece, is a breathtaking and important literary event. Seamlessly shifting among points of view, and written in dazzling prose, Patrick White's mastery of style and highly inventive storytelling will transport you as the work of few writers can.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This final, unfinished novel by Nobel laureate White (The Eye of the Storm) cements the late author's reputation as an incisive and compassionate voice of the 20th century. An elegiac portrait of two adolescents displaced during WWII, the novel guides the reader through multiple points of view, including Eirene Sklavos, brought to Australia after her father's death in a Greek prison, and Gilbert Horsfall, who witnessed the death of his friend in the Blitz and attempts to integrate into an unwelcoming community. White's prose is masterful, describing in surprising and ebullient turns of phrase everything from the book's eponymous garden to "thick-lensed spectacles might be helping him not to see the faces he is addressing." The novel was transcribed from White's original handwritten manuscript and left unedited, retaining his notes ("Find out about these mangroves") and the occasional false line. However, the roughness and the notes make a separation of author and text impossible, and reveal White to be as sympathetic and fascinating as Eirene and Gilbert. What White has left is a complete, complex, and beautiful portrait, an important addition to classic contemporary fiction.