THE COURTS OF MEMORY

by Frank Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 3, 1954

A first novel, this never sacrifices its vitality in its long, intensive examination of an inbred brother-sister relationship, as the uneasy history of Brace and Dick Griffin is ridden by reciprocal dependence and domination. Dick, three years younger than Brace tells their story, from earliest memories of her aggressive superiority to his entry into a world he was to find meaningless. Brace makes successive bad marriages. Dick drinks his way through an affair and the Army until Brace arranges his marriage to Janet which was to have been ""a marriage of salvation""- and is at best a compromise. Dick's return to California to take on his father's business stabilizes him without satisfying. But Brace, still adrift, returns home, there to find an exclusion which leads to suicide...The climate of excess and despair, the restive search for assurances which are missing in the pattern of the earlier generation, all this provides a dossier of unhappy emotions and flagrant actions. Conservatives may take offense, but one must recognize sincerity and sympathy, if little discipline.

Pub Date: May 3, 1954

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Vanguard

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1954

Categories: FICTION