Coral Glynn
A Novel
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3.5 • 25 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Coral Glynn arrives at Hart House, an isolated manse in the English countryside, early in the very wet spring of 1950, to nurse the elderly Mrs. Hart, who is dying of cancer. Hart House is also inhabited by Mrs. Prence, the perpetually disgruntled housekeeper, and Major Clement Hart, Mrs. Hart's war-ravaged son, who is struggling to come to terms with his latent homosexuality. When a child's game goes violently awry in the woods surrounding Hart House, a great shadow—love, perhaps—descends upon its inhabitants. Like the misguided child's play, other seemingly random events—a torn dress, a missing ring, a lost letter—propel Coral and Clement into the dark thicket of marriage.
A period novel observed through a refreshingly gimlet eye, Coral Glynn explores how quickly need and desire can blossom into love, and just as quickly transform into something less categorical. Borrowing from themes and characters prevalent in the work of mid-twentieth-century British women writers, Peter Cameron examines how we live and how we love—with his customary empathy and wit.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in the English countryside in the aftermath of WWII, this quietly compelling sixth novel from Cameron (The Weekend) focuses on the story of the eponymous heroine, Coral, a nurse, sent to Hart House in 1950 to tend the dying Mrs. Hart. With great efficiency, Cameron introduces the other players: Mrs. Hart's son, Maj. Clement Hart, an embittered veteran wounded in the war; his friend Robin Lofting; the brittle, disapproving housekeeper, Mrs. Prense. But after Mrs. Hart dies, and Major Hart proposes to Coral, this seemingly well-realized homage to the postwar British novel quickly turns almost gothic. Walking in a forest near Hart House, Coral comes across a young girl tied to a tree. She's being pelted with pinecones by a young boy in a game they call Prisoner. Though she insists they stop, Coral takes no other action; the young girl is later murdered in the same forest; and suspicion bizarrely falls upon Coral. The book is suffused with a lonely sadness and an aura of the surreal, and the many dramatic events in Coral's life are entirely plausible thanks to Cameron's skill as a storyteller.
