| Product Summary | | Format: Paperback | | ISBN: 9780226469522 | | Publisher: University of Chicago Press | | Publish Date: 4/10/2007 | | Buy.com Sku: 30030957 | | Item#: R2V57T | | Buy.com Sales Rank: 66410 | | Dimensions (in Inches) 8H x 5.25L x 0.5T |
|
|
|
| | | For years Rachel Cameron has dreamed of leaving her small town and manipulative mother; but duty and caution have kept her at home. At thirty-four, she finally confronts passion and death, and realizes that she cannot continue to sacrifice love and freedom, but needs both to survive. Rachel's passage toward self-discovery is one we will all recognize - one that is exciting, sad, funny, and true.
Annotation:
Rachel Cameron is a 34-year-old single woman, a schoolteacher in Manawaka, Canada. She bears resignedly the routine of teaching, the controlling behavior of her mother, but wants desperately to love and be loved. The novel takes place during a summer when Rachel encounters Nick, an old schoolmate who is now also a teacher; this novel was the basis for the 1968 movie RACHEL, RACHEL.
| PraiseJournal of Canadian Fiction
"...[S]uggests some aspects of existentialist thought as Rachel must choose between the nausea of bad faith and the anguish and despair of freedom. Laurence is also existential throughout her work in Sartre's primary sense in that her focus is on man's process of becoming, a process which reveals to him his essence or spirit. However, in distinction to existentialist thought and in accordance with the conventions of Christian believe, man discovers a preexisting spirit." - Sandra Djwa 1972Canadian Literature
"In A JEST OF GOD, seen as formally failed by some nineteenth-century reviewers, Margaret Laurence assays a responsive vocal style, the voice in the ear pursuing Rachel's mind even into the deep places where the most superior fiction (Joyce, Beckett, etc.) comes from. Instead of doggedly getting on with the 'story', the draggiest part of a book, the writing begins in its place and expands outward from the keystone province." - George Bowering Fall 1971 "Eleven Canadian Novelists"
"What she wanted from him, what he realized she wanted from him, and what was impossible for him to give, because it is not possible for any human being--she really wanted him to save her, to enter her life and say: 'Come with me and all will be well.' One individual cannot save another in that sense. We are not God, but what Nick did for Rachel was enable her to reach out, hold and touch another human being, which was what the sexual experience meant for her. It was the reaching out to another person and making herself vulnerable, as Rachel was able to do ultimately, with Nick, which led her to be able--to some extent--to liberate herself." - Margaret Laurence 1973 |
| Author Bio| Margaret Laurence | | Margaret Laurence lost her parents at an early age, and lived with her grandfather and aunt in Neepawa until enrolling in United College in Winnipeg. During her college years in the mid-1940s, she joined the Old Left, a political reform group. Upon graduating, Laurence married Jack Laurence, a civil engineer, and they left Canada and moved to England and then Africa, and finally--10 years later--returned to Canada. In 1962, the Laurences separated, and Margaret Laurence took their two children to England to write and teach there. She returned to Toronto in 1969 to teach at the university, and a few years later she settled in Ontario permanently. She died after a series of illnesses, at the age of 61. |
| |
|
|
__USERID__
http://www.buy.com/prod/a-jest-of-god/q/loc/106/30030957.html
|
