THE CENTER OF THE GREEN

by John Bowen ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

We don't want to have to think for ourselves, feel for ourselves, live by ourselves""- so speaks one of the characters in this fairly cheerless family picture- but even so- it is the failure to communicate that is the central theme of an extremely percipient novel. For while Mrs. Baker is a mother still trying to minister to the sons who are now grown (two are in London, one in Bombay), Colonel Baker long since withdrew from both his children and his pallid marriage, and now devotes himself to his Nature Diary and his garden. One boy, Charles, working for a small trade paper and living in a dreary basement flat, takes too many sleeping pills- as a rather tentative rebuttal of the pointlessness of his existence. The other son Julian, while married, indulges his penchant for young girls- first his landlord's daughter which leaves him to face a possible paternity suit as well as divorce,-then a fifteen year old pupil. While Charles, in his Group Therapy sessions, soon realizes that he can make no contact with anyone, Julian, who has always run away, now runs home. Colonel Baker makes an attempt to help him- fails, and the old man's death is a final abdication...... The inadequacy, the isolation of these lives has been accomplished in sharp detail and in small, shattering scenes, and while it is too comfortless for popular acceptance, Bowen is a writer of ease and some excellence. The market to try for will be somewheres between Angus Wilson and Penelope Mortimer- who handled this problem in feminine terms.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1959

Categories: FICTION