Word: frankau
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Died. Pamela Frankau, 59, prolific British novelist, a master of swiftly paced narrative and clever dialogue, who altogether produced 30 books ranging from her first light, breezy novels (Marriage of Harlequin, 1927) to later, more substantial works seeking to make a moral point, notably in the just completed trilogy, Clothes of the King's Son, a mystic parable about good and evil; of cancer; in London...
SING FOR YOUR SUPPER by Pamela Frankau. 311 pages. Random House...
Sherry is the drink Pamela Frankau is offering here for those who take it-out of a cut-glass decanter, and perhaps a biscuit to go with it. The time is 1926, when England was just recovering from the general strike. Back from assorted boarding schools, the three Weston children are assembled at a seaside resort where Daddy's musical show, The Moonrakers, is definitely not raking in the cash. Mummy has been dead for years, and Daddy has contrived a living out of a shoestring and the old school tie (Eton) by writing and acting in summer revues...
...invoking the perpetually Edwardian world of the British upper-class family, where Nanny's always Nanny and nobody dares call her Nan, Pamela Frankau has performed what must by now be almost a ritually required act for all female British authors. Despite this, the Weston children's summer opens onto satisfyingly sunny uplands of the past. Predictably arch and fey and charming, the characters are nevertheless conveyed with a kind of loving concern that can make even a relative seem momentarily fascinating...
...might be guessed, British Author Pamela Frankau, 50, belongs to the Eliza-crossing-the-ice school of fiction: the narrative floe consists in keeping the characters' daydream life one jump ahead of baying reality. She succeeds; artifice mimics art, animation apes life, but the entertainment, most of the time, is real...