THE INTRUDER

by John Rowe Townsend ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1970

Who is the stranger who calls himself Arnold Haithwaite? More, who is Arnold Haithwaite? Books to chew your fingernails by being scarce nowadays, the advent of unctuous Sonny, claiming to be old Ernest Haithwaite's nephew and threatening sixteen-year-old Arnold's tenure as his ""son,"" is a fine bit of bad business. So thoroughly does Sonny terrorize the feeble Ernest that Cottontree House becomes his fief. . . but so completely does he demoralize Arnold that the boy withdraws from the scene and into himself. Exit terror and enter tremors: from young Peter Ellison's discovery that Sonny is a denizen of derelict Grumble's Yard, in familiar Townsend territory, it's only a short distance to ""serene"" Jane Ellison's agitated confession of self-loathing to the apathetic Arnold. In isolated, inbred Skirlston the rootless, educated Ellisons--father's building a nearby nuclear power station--are as much interlopers as Sonny with his dreams of a marina and big money. During a record storm fifteen-year-old Jane, marooned in the Church in the Sea, is saved by Arnold's ""swearing through a stone wall"" to the disused tower; recovering the next day, she remembers his swearing with distaste, the rest only remotely. While in the same storm Sonny is killed and Arnold, whom he was chasing, reproaches himself for having lost a man to their common enemy, the sea. Elegiacally, the book begins and ends with ""sea, sand, stone, slate, sky,"" but the composition--melodrama into psychodrama--does not fit the frame. (Of course Townsend unresolved is still formidable.)

Pub Date: March 1, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1970

Categories: FICTION