ONE BY ONE

by Penelope Gilliatt ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 23, 1965

This attractively written, unsettling first novel is ostensibly- anyway for the first two thirds of its fatal course during a recurrence of the Great Plague in England- a story of life and death when the whole country is reduced to a state of phobic fear. Both the everyday as well as the exceptional phenomena of a time such as this are very well observed and stimulate sympathy through the story of Joe, a vet, and Polly, his wife, pregnant for the first time. Joe makes every effort to protect her, by some experimental injections, and by sealing her off hermetically in the house while he spends days and nights at a hospital and returns occasionally both afraid and alienated; he's dispirited, tetchy and remote. The end of the novel (Joe's earlier homosexual episode; the newspaper smear it occasions; his suicide) comes as something of an addendum, and the shift from the whole collective experience to the personal is uneasy. Until then the story has been pursued on more than one level with a dreadful conviction that it could happen in just such a way and its malignant theme has a healthy fascination.

Pub Date: April 23, 1965

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1965

Categories: FICTION