Afternoon With Rock Hudson

Author:   Mercedes Deambrosis ,  Mike Mitchell
Publisher:   Dedalus Ltd
ISBN:  

9781903517352


Pages:   100
Publication Date:   19 August 2005
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Afternoon With Rock Hudson


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Overview

"Dorita has made a success of life: she has a husband with a good position, children, furs, jewels, cars, a rich social life. In a crowded shopping street she meets Carmen, an old school friend she has not seen for years. Carmen is the dowdy, studious one. She has qualified as a teacher but is unmarried. She has none of the glamour of Dorita, but her self-esteem is bolstered by her belief that she is indispensable to her sister's family as a baby-sitter. A coffee to have a chat over past times is followed by a Martini, then another and another. Beneath the friendly chat, each woman tries to assert her sense of her own value, and things become more and more fraught until, in a grotesque attempt to prove her sexual superiority, Dorita goes to the toilet for a sexual encounter with a man sitting at the next table. AUTHOR: Of Spanish and Greek origin, Mercedes Deambrosis is a new and individual voice in French fiction. Milagrosa, her first novel,(Dedalus edition 2002) has been described as a revelation, a stylistic tour de force. Marie-Claire said, ""Mercedes Deambrosis is an unknown. That is quite normal, this is her first novel. But what assurance! One would swear it was written by an author at the height of her powers."""

Full Product Details

Author:   Mercedes Deambrosis ,  Mike Mitchell
Publisher:   Dedalus Ltd
Imprint:   Dedalus Ltd
ISBN:  

9781903517352


ISBN 10:   1903517354
Pages:   100
Publication Date:   19 August 2005
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

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Reviews

An accidental meeting between two old acquaintances turns into a long evening of bitter, drunken humiliations for both. In her second novel, Deambrosis (Milagrosa, 2002), a French author of Greek and Spanish descent, offers a brief, almost parable-like tale that's bent on exposing the arrogance that accompanies success and the neuroses that pollute a life full of failures. Dorita and Carmen knew each other in high school, but when they accidentally meet again on a winter's day outside a bustling Spanish department store, they're 50-somethings who've settled into very different lifestyles: Carmen is a mousy, timid schoolteacher caring for her sister's family instead of starting one of her own, while Dorita married up, to a cardiologist, and enjoys a ladies-who-lunch lifestyle of nice clothes and shiny jewelry. Dorita's proud enough-and insecure enough-to tell anybody who'll listen just how fortunate she is, and soon after the two decide to go out for drinks, Dorita turns Carmen into her punching bag, criticizing Carmen's beverage choices, her coat, her purse, even the handkerchief she uses to clean her glasses. Dorita becomes only more verbally abusive as the night drunkenly drags on, which of course only reveals the depths of her neediness; by the time Dorita attempts to seduce a young man in a dive bar, she's a thoroughly grotesque, hollowed-out creature. The familiar, hackneyed version of a story with two characters like these would end with Dorita's comeuppance and Carmen's sudden acquisition of a backbone. But Deambrosis resists the impulse to fall into cliches; though Dorita's actions are contemptible, she's not entirely wrong about Carmen, and as we learn more about Carmen's history (including a long-kept secret relating to the title of the book), she becomes as pitiable as she is goodhearted. Though it's a relatively unambitious novel-more like a one-act play than a full-bodied narrative-it accomplishes quite a bit within its limited boundaries. Slim but potent. (Kirkus Reviews)


Author Information

"Of Spanish and Greek origin, Mercedes Deambrosis is a new and individual voice in French fiction. Milagrosa, her first novel, (Dedalus edition 2002) has been described as a revelation, a stylistic tour de force. Marie-Claire said, ""Mercedes Deambrosis is an unknown. That is quite normal, this is her first novel. But what assurance! One would swear it was written by an author at the height of her powers."" An Afternoon with Rock Hudson is Mercedes Deambrosis's second novel. For many years an academic with a special interest in Austrian literature and culture, Mike Mitchell has been a freelance literary translator since 1995. He has published over eighty translations from German and French, including Gustav Meyrink's five novels and The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy. His translation of Rosendorfer's Letters Back to Ancient China won the 1998 Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize after he had been shortlisted in previous years for his translations of Stephanie by Herbert Rosendorfer and The Golem by Gustav Meyrink. His translations have been shortlisted four times for The Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize: Simplicissimus by Johann Grimmelshausen in 1999, The Other Side by Alfred Kubin in 2000, The Bells of Bruges by Georges Rodenbach in 2008 and The Lairds of Cromarty by Jean Pierre Ohl in 2013. His recent translations include The Prepper Room by Karen Duve, The Continuation of Simplicissimus by Johann Grimmelshausen, The Devil's Road by Jean-Pierre Ohl and A Dutiful Son by Pascal Bruckner. His biography of Gustav Meyrink: Vivo: The Life of Gustav Meyrink was published by Dedalus in November 2008. His website can be visited at homepages.phonecoop.coop/mjmitchell"

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