SOME GORGEOUS ACCIDENT

by James Kennaway ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 19, 1967

James Kennaway ever since Tunes of Glory (better remembered perhaps as a film than a book) has figured among the more accomplished English writers who have never written the same kind of story twice. This one is the most experimental one to date, certainly under the influence of the moderns, written in a rather discontinuous and meaningfully cryptic fashion, actually in snatches preceded by rather portentous headings--almost like stage directions--(Kennaway has just finished a play). In any case, since it deals with such strenuously unhappy people in and around bars, brothers, and Soho-hum hangouts of London's underside, it is fairly doleful to begin with.... Namely Linke, the once great war photographer, ""unswervingly devoted to his own dissolution""; Fiddes, a doctor in a slum surgery, with whom he shares some sort of indefinable, indissoluble rapport (Fiddes is to end up performing an abortion, losing his license); and Susie, an American girl whom Fiddes thinks he loves (but then there was that other girl who died on a ski slope) and who gets involved with Fiddes and then disappears after another ""gorgeous accident""--or was it? All of this is seen through a glass darkly--they're smashed most of the time.... Some Gorgeous Accident--a slip in the career of a talented writer.

Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1967

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1967

Categories: FICTION