MAUNDY

by Julian Gloag ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1968

After a conventional second novel, Mr. Gloag has attempted to repeat the success of his first. In My Mother's House, which was a sepulchral chiller with a sentimental interlining, Sui generis it would seem, since this is by no means as unusual nor as successful. Perhaps because it is more overt--even insistent--and the writing, acceleratingly fragmentary and slack, is only a technique with which Mr. Gloag emphasizes the psychic dismemberment of his central character, Maundy. Maundy works in a bank, plans to go to Africa and then marry, when he has an amnestic experience with a girl to whom he gives a lift on his motorcycle. What did he do to her? What happened to her? Phasing in and out, he searches for her, has more and more random experiences with a succession of whores, attacks his fiancee, vandalizes the apartment of a fag friend, buggers a little boy, etc., etc. Here the elements of shock take precedence over whatever sympathies one might, only just possibly, entertain toward Maundy, that anonymous archetype of today's literature of the alienated. The book still reads with momentum and if you pick it up, you will go right on to the ineluctable end of Maundy.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1968

Categories: FICTION