Sunday, May 30, 2021

A Family Holiday: Summer's Lease (John Mortimer)


 

 John Mortimer. Summer’s Lease (1988) Molly Pargeter, who carries the burdens of family life, arranges a Tuscan holiday in a rented villa for a her family. Her husband Hugh will of course take credit for the idea and the planning. Her randy father, a writer of occasional pieces for local newspaper, tags along. What follows is an apparently casual but carefully plotted ramble of a story, in which Molly’s obsessive search for the truth causes a calamity of which she is blissfully unaware. Some rifts are mended, some ambitions frustrated, nostalgia gets its due. Well done. ***

No comments:

The Pegnitz Junction (Gallant, 1982)

Mavis Gallant. The Pegnitz Junction. (1982) The title novella plus five short stories, all about post-war Germany. They have the ring of tr...