Snowdie has to bring up her twin boys alone after her husband, King Maclain, disappears one day, discarding his hat on the banks of the Big Black. Loch Morrison, convalescing with malaria, watches from his bedroom window as wayward Virgie Rainey meets a sailor in the vacant house opposite.
Finding the theatre of the 1920s lacking in bite and conviction, Thornton Wilder set out to bring back realism and to celebrate the innocent, simple and religious. This title includes "Our Town"; "The Skin of our Teeth"; and "The Matchmaker".
Written by Ryunosuke Akutagawa - one of Japan's foremost stylists and a modernist master whose short stories are marked by imagery, cynicism, beauty, and wild humour. His other works include: "Rashomon"; "In a Bamboo Grove"; "The Nose"; "O-Gin"; "Loyalty"; "Death Register"; "The Life of a Stupid Man"; and "Spinning Gears".
Claudia Hampton lies dying in hospital. There is Gordon, her adored brother; Jasper, the charming, untrustworthy lover and father of Lisa, her cool, conventional daughter; and Tom, her one great love, both found and lost in wartime Egypt. This novel weaves a mesh of memories, flashbacks and shifting voices, in a story of loss and desire.