Who Could Love the Nightingale?

Wren Publishing, Australia, 1973. First Edition. Hardcover. Good Condition/Good. Inscribed by Author. The time is 1971. The places are Melbourne, Sydney, and the tract of land between the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers. This is a novel about personality and how personality is shaped by place and period. It is also a novel of poignant human relationships: Edward Le Rossignol, the nightingale who won’t allow his personality to be squashed flat and dull. Margaret Ward, a beautiful young art teacher who has yet to develop her own personality remote from her wealthy family and associates, turns to Edward. Their affair develops gradually – not a love relationship in the ordinary sense of the word, but an elaborate, intricate affair of vital importance to them both. As awareness of each other’s personality grows, the reader is carried along, not merely as observer but as participants, committed to the characters. We become aware of a richly inflected medium, full of cross references, conveying the inner and outer lives of the characters who gain their full reality and stature at the moment of leaving the action, rather like a piece of music which is completed not by the last sounds but by the haunting echoes and reverberations left in the mind. 286 pages. Dust jacket has rubbing and small closed tears to edges. Previous owners name to top of title page. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: 1-2 kilos. Category: Fiction; Australian::Australian Fiction. Inscribed by Author. ISBN: 0858850745. ISBN/EAN: 9780858850743. Inventory No: 264674.. 9780858850743