INTENSIVE CARE

by Janet Frame ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1970

Diffused in ""memory and dreams through which to recover what is lost and dead,"" this la ronde of experience extends from World War I to some time after tomorrow and via the parallel, interconnected experiences of Tom Livingstone and his family. Their common fate is loneliness and their common destiny is of course death. Tom, when widowed in his mid-sixties, finds himself in the Recovery Unit of a hospital where the nurse he loved during World War I lies dying of cancer and is overwhelmed by spasms of pain (""It's niggly again""); he himself will die suddenly after intending to marry the common, proprietary ""Fur Coat Peg""; his brother, a drunk and dirty old man, will also be claimed by cancer as is one of his daughters. A grandson after a frustrating affair picks up his gun; etc., etc. until in the future there's a Human Delineation Act designed to prevent lite prolongation of life when disabled or diseased--only there's a dull normal girl, Milly, and her diary, to repudiate its justification. . . . Most of this, taking place as it does, in a winding sheet of materia morbida and moribunda is intentionally repetitive and disconsolate even where Miss Frame's particularly sympa thetic awareness of rejection and negation make it more bearable than il might seem and even where she asserts the human need and right to survival. Still it will be a hard-won triumph for the book as it was for all those who are afflicted and dispossessed in one way or another.

Pub Date: May 1, 1970

ISBN: 080761341X

Page Count: -

Publisher: Braziller

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1970

Categories: FICTION