Word: quentins
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...first novel as they unroll side by side in post-war London. Her voice is self-assured, speaking to us from a secure vantage point, anchored thirty years later by reputation and maturity. Fleur is single, 25 years old and extremely, efficiently ambitious. She's secretary to Sir Quentin, founder and sole manipulator behind the Autobiographical Association, who has convinced ten of his very boring but deeply blue-blooded friends that they must record the stories of their lives for posterity, and most of all, for money and glory...
...resemblance to Spark's own life. Fleur gives us precious little personal background. Fleur lives alone in a one-room apartment. She spends every free minute working on her first novel, Warrender Chase, named after its hero. Warrender, strangely enough, bears an uncaany resemblance--in all aspects--to Sir Quentin...
Meanwhile, the members of the association exchange doubts and suspicions. They show signs of addiction to amphetamines Quentin gives them as part of mystical rites that have become central to the Autobiographical Association. Their struggles for sanity and survival as they succumb to Quentin's mysterious manipulations--part of an elaborate con-game--become farcical and charming. Spark's talent for dialogue and vacuous wit blooms, fertilized by the increasingly hilarious improbable set of characters and situations...
...Quentin Crisp, sartorially eccentric English author, on the distinction between fashion and style: "Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know...
...Vita's feelings were reciprocated is ambiguous: the caress and diverted kiss that occur onstage imply rather more than they reveal. Love is an unbalanced equation. The evidence of the play echoes the reflection offered by Woolf's nephew Quentin Bell in his biography of his aunt: "If the test of passion be blindness, then [Virginia's] affections were not very deeply engaged." Virginia sharpens that point in the play: "Life and a lover she thought. It does not scan." For Woolf, her work was her life. While she would drown herself as pitiably as Ophelia...