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THE LAST OF THE GREEKS by Olivia Davis Kirkus Star

THE LAST OF THE GREEKS

By

Pub Date: Sept. 5th, 1968
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Mark Prentiss, the title character, is Way Up There at the end of a long career in art, a recognized English master at portraiture in an era stunned by squiggle and dribble abstracts and junk collages. He proposed to a club of fellow artists that they establish an award to be presented to an outstanding artist. They promptly agreed, made him chairman, and insensitively voted the first medal to Jean Alexandre, a Cocteau-esque jack-of-all-arts (and both sexes) who had run off thirty years before with Prentiss' wife Berenice. This rare novel of manners takes off from there, bringing Prentiss, his son, daughter and grandson together with the Alexandres and their daughter in a series of encounters over food--a dinner, luncheons, snacks, a tea--and the resulting reactions of the three generations results in a form of suspense seldom encountered outside of mystery novels. It also makes for superb light comment on changing, contrasting behavior patterns. Through flashback and by the way they handle their victuals and spirits, the characters are quickly introduced and revealed. As serio as it is comic, this should prove attractive to your top 10% novel reading clientele.