Word: vorontosov
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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This first novel by a woman in her forties is an astonishing work, one of the few rewarding books of a so-so season. The spinster of the title is Anna Vorontosov, a schoolteacher in back-country New Zealand. She is a small woman of uncertain age, whose passions are still young because she has never used them. Gifted but a little balmy, Anna primes herself for school each morning with half a tumbler of brandy, frequently gets the weeps, talks persuasively to trees and flowers, has stupendous headaches in Technicolor. Wildly alive, Anna flinches only at the thought...
...Anna Vorontosov is a major literary creation, a woman forever leaping to the barricades against mediocrity. The joy of teaching has seldom been more beautifully described than in this book. It seems only right-and not melodramatic-that Paul, a fellow teacher who respects neither the minds nor the bodies of his pupils, should blow out his brains. It is Author Ashton-Warner's view that teaching is a most dangerous activity, particularly at the level where the untutored five-year-old first collides with the civilized world. They may seem adorable infants now, but they are the whores...
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