THE INNERMOST CAGE

by Kathrine Talbot ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 6, 1955

The reluctant return to the past by Frances Siddorn, an attractive woman and a successful novelist, bares the hatred she has hidden from herself- and the world- and goes back to the catastrophe at sea when as a child she had been the single survivor in a lifeboat and had only the guilty memory of the sacrifice her missionary parents had made that she might live. Now, well insulated in her home at Maple Hill, and in the illusion of a happy marriage to Lloyd, she has found not only the warmth of success- but also of benevolence. A new disciple and dependent is young Perryn, with whom Lloyd falls in love, and while Perryn at first is outraged by what seems an ""unnatural treason"" against Frances, she leaves with Lloyd. Frances alone, and at first unwilling to accept the fact that Lloyd will not return to her, parallels the experience of her childhood in the rowboat Lloyd had once given her to exorcise her ghost, and left at the mercy of memory which now returns fully- she feels again the hatred of a love which had excluded her and is the victim of another abandonment... A probe of scorched sensitivities, this projects its state of emotional suspension and dissolution with feminine subtlety.

Pub Date: May 6, 1955

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1955

Categories: FICTION