THE SHATTERED CLASS

by Jean Ariss ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Except for a certain haziness induced by a fist person narrator who remains nameless along with most of those involved, this is an intimate, lacerating close-up of the degenerative, destructive course of alcoholism and its painful side-effects for all concerned. Meeting him just after the loss of her own son, bored with her husband who is usually away (many of the physical circumstances here are deliberately indistinct), she falls in love with him prior to the revelation of his previous commitments, his uncontrollable delirium tremens, and his fixation on a rich, powerful father who ""dominates and abolishes"". Securing help- a psychiatrist- she is told that her love for him may possibly stabilize and him. His perforates - and this is the first of several times in which she must fight his father's possession and her exclusion; he starts to work again, but there are the inevitable lapses; she endures increasingly debasing, soden inecidents and after periods spent. In jails and institutions, witness his final integration with the perhaps long overdue realization that her love is not enough.... It is perhaps hard to accept some of this- her faith in him which is no more than naive hope and a love which can remain no undiminished; but there is no question of the intensity achieved and tra.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962

Categories: FICTION