BIRD OF NIGHT

by Susan Hill ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1972

This is another one of Susan Hill's tacit if, paradoxically, precise dossiers of a relationship -- meaning more than it says or acknowledges. There is again the same curiously romantic albeit disconsolate aura enveloping the attachment of two men, as in Strange Meeting (p. 90) while anything more overtly homosexual is altogether waived. The earlier book took place during World War I; this takes place in a less than now present where Harvey, an Egyptologist, an octogenarian, looks back on the past when for a period of time he became the friend, cook and custodian of a famous poet Francis Croft, more and at times less mad. From the moment when Harvey met Francis crying, clawing the face he claimed not to be his (his dualism will always be explicitly featured -- Francis' great poem will be called Janus) and afraid that he will be institutionalized -- he is homicidal/suicidal. This follows his erratic moodswing during the earlier years and his progressive deterioration during the latter ones. As Francis knew -- ""I am for hell."" Miss Hill is a very controlled writer who strips her story and the circumstances in which she places it to a graphic minimum and, via these backwaters of deeply troubled emotional experience, seems to be saying that a certain freedom must be permitted if something is to be salvaged -- a life or as in this case a genius.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Saturday Review Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1972

Categories: FICTION