DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT

by Diana Athill ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 14, 1967

Diana Athill wrote one collection of short stories (An UnavoidabLe Delay- 1962) and this, although the brushwork is light, is a well defined first novel sketching in people and places with a sure touch. Along with a sense of life-as-it-is. Particularly for Meg Bailey, who leaves a drab country Church of England parsonage, a prim father, a plaintive mother, to go off to school. There through her closest friend Roxane, a soft and sociable sort, and Roxane's mother, a philistine, worldly woman, Meg moves away and up to London, art school, and a Job as an illustrator. While Roxane marries Dick, one of her mother's decorative young men, and Meg falls in love with him. This is then primarily the story of their affair which goes on and on for several years, even after its uncomfortable exposure (to her parents, via Roxane's mother) until Dick leaves for America, through the weeks of purposeless and numbing wretchedness to follow... While Miss Athill is not as sharp a writer as say Edna O'Brien (the problem perhaps--you identify all this without identifying) she appeals to the same audience which has had very little of this kind to read lately--a woman's novel with a flickering, sympathetic intelligence.

Pub Date: Nov. 14, 1967

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1967

Categories: FICTION