Overview

Esther Prescott has seen little of life outside her wealthy family’s Rose Bay mansion – until flashy Stan Peterson comes roaring up the drive in his huge American car and barges into her life. Within a fortnight they are living in his Kings Cross flat. Moody and erratic, proud of his well-bred wife yet bitterly resentful of her privilege, Stan is involved with his former girlfriend and a series of shady business deals. Esther, innocent and desperate to please him, must endure his controlling ways. This story of a troubled and obsessive marriage, set against the backdrop of postwar Sydney, is devastating. First published in 1957, Down in the City announced Elizabeth Harrower as a major Australian writer.

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9781489407436

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`[Harrower] reveals an astonishing facility to reveal a world in a few brush strokes.' -- The West Australian

Clamurro is author of Beneath the Fiction (1997), a study of Cervantes's 12 exemplary novellas. Here he revisits the narratives to consider recent criticism of the texts and to reflect further on the structure and significance of the individual works and of the collection as a whole. Clamurro always has viewed the novellas as rich, suggestive, and complex, but here he seems more committed to defining multiple options for contextualization, that is, to seeking the tensions inherent in the fictions-and in the age of which they were products-and, he stresses, their relevance for today's readers. He highlights not only a shared intricacy but also a tone of pessimism and cynicism, or at least the potential for negativity, that often has been unnoticed or underestimated. One conclusion of the study is that social and cultural conventions in the Novelas ejemplares are meticulously plotted and presented in a manner that reveals points of contact between early modern Spanish life (and art) and contemporary concerns. Like its predecessor, the book is clearly written, well thought out, and illuminating. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. * CHOICE *

'[Harrower] reveals an astonishing facility to reveal a world in a few brush strokes.' -- The West Australian

Author Information

"Elizabeth Harrower (born 1928 in Sydney, Australia) is an Australian novelist and short story writer. Harrower published her first three novels in quick succession. In 1971 her fifth novel In Certain Circles was set to be published until she abruptly withdrew it from publication following the death of her mother. In an interview with The Australian, Harrower claimed that she had written the book under pressure after receiving a grant and called the act of writing it ""forced labour"". Afterwards she published a few short stories before giving her writing up entirely by 1977. Deidre Rubenstein is regarded as one of Australia's most accomplished actresses. As a stage actress, she has starred in productions with all major Australian theatre companies and has created three highly acclaimed one-woman shows which have toured Australia and overseas. Deidre won an Australian Film Industry (AFI) award for Best Actress in the mini-series Palace of Dreams and is also a multi-award-winning narrator. Audiobooks narrated for Bolinda include Elizabeth Costello by Nobel Prize-winning author J.M. Coetzee, Gilgamesh by Joan London, Elizabeth Harrower novels and various ABC titles."

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