Word: tarrant
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Cotterell's fourth novel (and first to be published in the U.S.) is a British Book Society choice, has sold 40,000 copies since publication. Strait and Narrow is simply the story of a self-made man, Richard Tarrant, and what Tarrant learns about himself...
...Tarrant is one of those men whose ambition jells before his character sets. Early in life he decides that middle-class gentility and slightly frayed cuffs are not enough for him. There is nothing melodramatic or Freudian about Tarrant vis-à-vis parents. His father is a good surveyor; his mother, an enlightened type, believes in not spanking children and in the BBC's Third Program. Tarrant vows that he would "rather starve than live as they had lived...
...largely because some day "it might be very useful" to have a war record. After the war he is ready for his next big push: a seat in Parliament. Just shy of his goal, his wife discovers him renewing a wartime love affair. Hopelessly attached to her husband, Nancy Tarrant commits suicide...