Word: idyl
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...background material (which she never uses), she whacks away against a 5:30 deadline. Deadline is sometimes missed in the agony of indecision. Last week Sylvia was working ahead in preparation for a planned vacation with Sumner. But even vacations are no particular rest. On a brief winter idyl in the Bahamas, sunning herself near a Detroit executive who did not recognize her, Sylvia picked up a chance remark about an impending Ford stock sale that made front pages all over...
Elsewhere, Durrell notes that the "Greeks adore partings." So does Durrell. He writes in what might be called the present past tense. He seems to be savoring his island idyl as if the relativities of war, chance and change had already foreclosed it, as indeed they subsequently did. In Durrell's case, the nostalgic mood is an authentic foretaste of his fictional calling, that subtle parting, or detachment, of a novelist from his experience, without which life would never become literature. But while he is still the close observer, Durrell sets down much of the immemorial daily life...
This impressive new novel begins as a Midwestern idyl set on a leafy, residential street in Rainbow Center, Ohio. A widow er of 78. Realtor Boyd Mason comes home to the wide-lawned Victorian house he shares with his sister Alma, a spinsterish ex-schoolteacher. Each day is an agreeable carbon of the one before. Boyd grumbles contentedly about Alma's bluntness, stinginess and love of gossip. Alma gets comfortably cross at Boyd's deafness, his lack of interest in scandal, his irritating habit of forgetting to flush the toilet...
...save the bride (Sarmila Tagore*) from the curse that will fall upon her if she is not married at the appointed hour, Apu makes the noble gesture and marries her himself. To his amazement he falls in love with the girl, and for a year they live a garret idyl in Calcutta. Then she dies in childbirth. Almost insane with grief, Apu throws his novel, his career and almost his life away, but he finds himself again in his relation to his son, in his duty to the future, in his love of life...
...cabinet to reacquaint himself. "Miss Betty Hyams, twice a day after meals,'' said the label on one bottle. "I was saved. Betty." The plot, however, is mostly concerned with another girl-healthy enough not to require a medicine cabinet-who comes to share Julian's rustic idyl for a while. When he finds her clasped by a lustful vegetarian, he takes to his bed for several days in disgust, but wakes up to find wild flowers thrusting up through the bleak earth of his gloom; there is money in the mail from an American publisher. At book...