THE BODY
By
William Sansom, who has distinguished himself as a short story writer of the avantgarde, with many of the obliquities, obscurities conditioned by Franz Kafka, here writes a full length novel. Compressed, concentrated in form, clever- often cruel,- in content, this is a skillful study of jealousy, tells of the obsessive fascination of Henry, a hairdresser, with the conjectured infidelity of his wife, a dimpled, bleached and rather stupid woman of forty. The theme is played out on two levels as the innocent events are distorted by Henry's imagination, and as they are in actuality. And at the close, when Henry realizes the absurdity of his suspicions, he regrets the loss of drama they have lent to his ""passive, passionless life"" ... Highly sophisticated, subtle, this is for the discriminating reader.