Concluding (British Literature) - Softcover

Green, Henry

3.85

270 ratings by Goodreads

9781564782533: Concluding (British Literature)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564782530 ISBN 13: 9781564782533

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 2000

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Considered by Henry Green to be one of his best novels, "Concluding" tells the story of the strange events events that occur in a single day at a State-run school for girls. Retired scientist Mr. Rock, "an old man in love with his goose," lives in a cottage with his adult granddaughter Elizabeth. Bordering the grounds of the school, the cottage--which the State has given Rock for the duration of his life in gratitude for his scientific contributions--is coveted by the school's two spinsterish governesses, Misses Edge and Baker.

As the story opens, two students are missing. The resultant search for their whereabouts raises numerous fears and questions: have they been harmed? have they left on their own, alone? or have they perhaps been persuaded by the school's only male instructor, Sebastian Birt? how will the governesses keep the news from parents and State authorities until the girls have been found and an acceptable story contrived? will Rock report them for negligence? Meanwhile, as rumors and versions of the girls' disappearance spread through the school, and the governesses attempt to conceal their alarm by preparing for the school's tenth annual Founders Day Ball, the seemingly innocent proceedings take on an air of mystery, intrigue, and impending doom.

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About the Author:

Henry Green was the pen name of Henry Vincent Yorke. He was born in 1905 at the family home of his parents, near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, England, and was educated at Eton and Oxford. He worked at the family engineering firm for most of his life and pursued a parallel career as a novelist. He married in 1928 and had one son. During WWII he served in the London Fire Brigade. He died in December 1973.

Review:

“A darkly comic romp of rare intensity that confounds as much as it astounds.”
- Star Tribune

“Discomfiting social comedy―think Bunuel meets Forster or Beckett meets Mitford.”
- The New Yorker

“Lush enough to get lost in.”
- The Paris Review

“Green's books live on with ever-brightening intensity”
- The Wall Street Journal

“Henry Green’s silences are instruments of sublime communication.”
- Becca Rothfeld, Times Literary Supplement

“A novel of projections, protractions, long shots, and shadows flying ahead, a slow fall. Uncommonly close to the quick of experience, the sentences are short but they are glancing―the effect can be magically exhilarating, as when the knife thrower does not pierce but surrounds the living target, and it is the reader whose heart is thereby found. The sinister world of Concluding is beautiful, side-lit and colored like an undersea kingdom.”
- Eudora Welty

“Such rarity, such marvelous originality, intuition, sensuality and finish...”
- John Updike

“The characters and story come alive in an almost incredible way, quite beyond anything achieved by conventional methods of writing.”
- Terry Southern

“The most gifted prose writer of his generation.”
- V.S. Pritchett

“The best English novelist.”
- W. H. Auden

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