Word: burnett
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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MOTHER & SON (256 pp.)-/. Compton-Burnett-Messner...
...explain the thousands of books that come out every year?" asks a character in Mother & Son. The reply: "I do not explain them. There seems to me to be no explanation." The same answer might apply to questions about the works of veteran Novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett. What explanation is there for an author who has produced, at almost regular two-year intervals, a string of novels that have all much the same title (e.g., Pastors & Masters; Elders & Betters; Brothers & Sisters'), are about much the same people living in much the same house at much the same period (turn...
Author Compton-Burnett has used the same revealing piece of wood off and on for 20 years, sometimes broken in a desk, sometimes built into a locked drawer-though once, admittedly, it was widened and made into a bridge over a ravine: the result was nearly neck-breaking. The nearest equivalent to this slice of timber is the distaff which the Greeks put in the hands of the Fates-and man's fate, in the Greek sense, is in fact the essential clue to the mystery of Author Compton-Burnett's long (15) line of novels...
...people refuse to accept this fact: they struggle to release themselves by trying to make their lives different from what they are fated to be. This struggle, enacted with Greek gravity and formality, is invariably the theme of a Compton-Burnett novel. The skill she exhibits in playing witty and tragic variations on it explains why her fans agree with Critic...
...hearing this, Miranda drops dead-and the slaves are suddenly free. Or rather, they have that illusion, for Author Compton-Burnett devotes the rest of Mother & Son to hammering home a vital truth: those who consent to live under tyranny can never be released from it, not even by the death of the tyrant. The bereaved men make desperate proposals of marriage; eager spinsters hurry to accept them; but it is no use. By the last page, everything is just as Miranda would want it: both her men have proved unmarriageable, bound by force of habit and inclination...