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Carregando... The Ruffian on the Stair (Virago Modern Classics) (original: 2001; edição: 2002)de Nina Bawden
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In six days Silas Mudd will be one hundred years old and is alarmingly healthy - more than can be said of his son. 'Not sure he'll make old bones' he confides loudly to his daughter-in-law. Grumpily flattered by the fuss over his impending party - even from his irritating family, Silas' greater pleasure is 'to go over his life' and the women whom he loved and who made trouble for him: his sterling and capable Aunt; his wonderfully vulgar second wife Bella; Molly, a music-hall singing sister; and Effie, his first and hopeless wife. Silas is the only one left who knows exactly what is shoring up his family. And now he sits, waiting and thinking, just wondering what it would be like if he were to say ... Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — Carregando... GênerosClassificação decimal de Dewey (CDD)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Classificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos E.U.A. (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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“Madam Life’s a piece in bloom
Death goes digging everywhere
She’s the tenant of the room
He’s the ruffian on the stair
W.E Henley
Silas Mudd just days away from his one hundredth birthday, is something of a wily old sod, his deafness coming and going as it suits him. As the preparations for a special family lunch to celebrate, get underway Silas come to reflect on his long life. He remembers those who he has lost, his two wives, the aunt who brought him up following his mother’s tragic death, his father and his beloved sister. It is the tragedy of such longevity that everyone, one knew when young, and so many people one has loved, are already long gone, Bawden was only in her mid-seventies when she wrote this novel, and yet she seems to have understood the sadness and loneliness of such old age keenly.
Silas’s grown up children and step children are due to attend the lunch, but still have their own concerns to attend to in the midst of worries over gifts and seating plans. Silas’s son Will, many years younger than his two elder sisters, neither of whom live in London, is recovering from Pneumonia in hospital, while his wife Coral, an actress is preparing to play Gertrude in Brighton. On the way home from visiting her husband in hospital, Coral undergoes a frightening experience, that she later feels unable to talk about to anyone, and is constantly berating herself for – her secrecy leading Will to allow his imagination to run wild. Silas’s eldest daughter Hannah lives in Yorkshire with her husband Julius, and lots of sheep, her daughter one of the family not invited to the lunch. Hannah’s not sure at all how Silas would react to his thirty-something granddaughter being unmarried and pregnant anyway. However what bothers Hannah even more is just what is it that Silas’s step-daughter Clare is planning? Clare the daughter of Silas’s second wife Bella is a particular favourite of Silas’s much to the irritation of other family members. Alice, the sister that comes between Hannah and Will is a world famous science Professor, travelling from Australia for the lunch having been attending a conference, she’s due to stay with Will and Coral.
“Since Bella’s death, Silas has become a traveller in time. He sits with a book on his lap – he doesn’t want to be seen as an old man, dreaming – and allows his mind to run free. He sees- feels –his past life as a vast, echoing tunnel, or underground cave. He journeys through it and around it, mining the seam of his personal history; hidden or half-forgotten events barely glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, a brief flash of light in the darkness, other dwelt upon, constantly revisited, permanently lit. He can traverse a decade in a matter of seconds or linger for days on a single moment, in a particular room.”
While Silas’s children and step children worry over birthday celebrations and family politics, Silas spends most of his time, where he now feels most comfortable – the past. Re-living his childhood, and then his love affair with his first wife the socially superior Effie, their marriage and the years with their two daughters before the Second World War disrupted everything, and Effie’s late pre-menopausal baby Will came along – which would lead eventually to her early death. Silas remembers his joys, his disappointments and the secrets he kept.
Nina Bawden is brilliant at exploring the intricacies of family life, and in The Ruffian on the Stair, she also explores, the poignancies, and pitfalls of extreme old age, injecting a little humour – and an awful lot of sympathetic understanding along the way. This novel was a real surprise, I had expected to really like it, but hadn’t expected it turn out a five star read which kept me up till 1.30 to finish. ( )