The Catherine Wheel
Text Classics
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Twenty-five-year-old Clemency James has moved from Sydney to a chilly bedsit on the other side of the world. During the day she studies for the bar by correspondence; in the evenings she gives French lessons to earn a meagre wage. When she meets Christian, a charismatic would-be actor, she can see he's trouble - not least because he's involved with an older woman who has children. She is drawn to him nonetheless: drawn into his world of unpayable debts and wild promises.
First published in 1960, The Catherine Wheel is Elizabeth Harrower's third novel and the only one of her books not set in Australia. In it she turns her unflinching gaze on the grim realities of 1950s London, and the madness that can infect couples.
Elizabeth Harrower was born in Sydney in 1928 and moved to London in 1951. Her first novel Down in the City was published in 1957, and was followed by The Long Prospect a year later. In 1959 she returned to Sydney where she began working for the ABC and as a book reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1960 she published The Catherine Wheel, the story of an Australian law student in London, her only novel not set in Sydney. The Watch Tower appeared in 1966. No further novels were published until May 2014 when Harrower's 'lost' novel, In Certain Circles, was released. Her work is austere, intelligent, ruthless in its perceptions about men and women. She was admired by many of her contemporaries, including Patrick White and Christina Stead, and is without doubt among the most important writers of the postwar period in Australia. Elizabeth Harrower lives in Sydney.
'I love The Watch Tower, but I love The Catherine Wheel more. Like all the Harrower books, with their psychological mysteries, their droll humour, their brilliant language and ear for voices, The Catherine Wheel takes your hand from the first page and beckons you in.' Ramona Koval
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First published in Australia in 1960, Harrower's (In Certain Circles) novel now comes to the U.S. for the first time. Clemency, a young Australian law student living in a London bedsit, moves through her life with great control. She feels a measured passion for Christian, a failed actor whom Clemency tutors in French which spurs the jealousy of Olive, the older woman Christian has taken up with. Thus begins the central tension of the novel, a cat and mouse game of relenting and withholding. Clemency, a self-described "student of human nature," feels a "sweet ferocious calm," which is also an apt description of Harrower's writing it's consistently restrained, even when describing love, deception, and failure. Though the narrative offers some suspenseful questions whether or not Christian is really in love with her plays out within a hundred dreary French lessons, as Clemency drinks tea and quietly wavers in her moral resolve Harrower is most concerned in the psychological peculiarities of her small cast of characters. Indeed, the action rarely moves to Clemency's bedroom, and the reader is led to believe that the bleakness of the room is a protracted metaphor for the bleakness of 1950s London. At times, Clemency's emotional distance can be witty, as when she dryly observes of Christian, "This must be what they called personality." Other times, however, the adjective-drunk quality of Harrower's writing makes it difficult to maintain a real interest in her self-destructive characters.
