NATALIE/NATALIA

by Nicholas Mosley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 27, 1971

Distancing far beyond Accident and Impossible Object and away from the readers who were arrested and attracted by the earlier books, this deals with all kinds of rifts within the divided self of one Tony Greville, Conservative Member of Parliament. That's about all that you will know about him before he rides a bicycle into a swimming pool except that he loves Natalie/Natalia who seems to his split self angelic on the one hand, predatory on the other. During this period of paranoia (""I see life as if it had some meaning. And I imagine I have some slight control"") Tony tries to reconcile other opposites -- God and man, vision and experience, destruction and resurrection. Mosley's style, full of elisions and jumpshifts and paradoxes and pauses, is attuned to this kind of brittle brinkmanship in which he attempts to span the unknown and the unknowable. ""It is the oddity that gives meaning."" On this premise alone meanings abound, but their apprehension is a febrile, catch-as-catch-can affair.

Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1971

Categories: FICTION