THE SIMPLE TRUTH

by Elizabeth Hardwick ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 10, 1954

An ironic, and unobtrusively invidious commentary on commonplace people and meagre lives, which have their own private presumptions of a special superiority, is occasioned by a murder trial in a rather featureless state university town in Iowa- where not the young man, who may face the ultimate penalty, but two spectators experience the resolution of his fate. They are Joseph Parks, a fellow student there whose own future is undetermined, and Anita Mitchell, a professor's wife who leads a quiet, childless- life which enables her to indulge her ""fine intelligence and small ambition"". Theirs is a proprietary, partisan interest in the case which they attend from day to day- an interest quickened by their indignation at the possible injustice which may be dealt to Rudy Peck, the defendant, whom they (alone) know to be innocent. The trial concluded- and the verdict reached- Pock is freed. Theirs again is the anticlimactic disappointment that others (the jury) have been able to obtain this judgment without their special powers of divination and discernment.... An odd, original talent (The Ghostly Lover- 1945) Elizabeth Hardwick writes with a tremendous subtlety and a fine drawn sensibility of common frailties. A special market here.

Pub Date: Feb. 10, 1954

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1954

Categories: FICTION