Master Georgie: A Novel

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		Master Georgie: A Novel
		Master Georgie: A Novel

基本信息·出版社：Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc
·页码：190 页
·出版日期：1999年02月
·ISBN：0786705639
·条形码：9780786705634
·版本：1999-02-01
·装帧：精装
·开本：20开 Pages Per Sheet
·外文书名：乔治与仆人(小说)

内容简介 Book Description
The highly acclaimed New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 1998 and Booker Prize Nominee that reinvents the historical novel from Beryl Bainbridge, the distinguished author of The Birthday Boys and Every Man For Himself.

A misadventure in a brothel links the destiny of the enigmatic George Hardy, a surgeon and amateur photographer, to a foundling who becomes his obsessively devoted maid, a wily street boy who takes advantage of his sexual ambiguity, and his alternately philosophical and libidinous brother-in-law in this terse, searing novel that takes them from the comfortable parlors of Victorian Liverpool to the horrific battlefields of the Crimean War.

Amazon.com
Beryl Bainbridge seems drawn to disaster. First she tackled the unfortunate Scott expedition to the South Pole in The Birthday Boys; later (but emphatically pre-DiCaprio) came the sinking of the Titanic, in Every Man for Himself. Now, in her 3rd historical novel (and her 16th overall), she takes on the Crimean War, and the result is a slim, gripping volume with all of the doomed intensity of the Light Brigade's charge--but, thankfully, without the Tennysonian bombast. "Some pictures," a character confides, "would only cause alarm to ordinary folk." There's a warning concealed here, and one that easily disturbed readers would do well to heed: Master Georgie is intense, disturbing, revelatory--and not always pretty to look at.

Bainbridge's narrative circles round the enigmatic figure of George Hardy, a surgeon, amateur photographer, alcoholic, and repressed homosexual who counters the dissipation of his prosperous Liverpool life by heading for the Crimean Peninsula in 1854. His journey and subsequent tour of duty are told in three very different voices: Myrtle, an orphan whose lifelong loyalty to her "Master Georgie" becomes an overriding obsession; Pompey Jones, street urchin, fire-eater, photographer, and George's sometime lover; and Dr. Potter, George's scholarly brother-in-law, whose retreat from the war's carnage and into books takes on a tinge of madness.

United by a sudden death in a Liverpool brothel in 1846, these characters plumb the curious workings of love, war, class, and fate. In between, Bainbridge frames an unforgettable series of tableaux morts: a dying soldier, one lens of his glasses "fractured into a spider's web"; a decapitated leg, toes "poking through the shreds of a cavalry boot"; two dead men "on their knees, facing one another, propped up by the pat-a-cake thrust of their hands." Glimpsed as if sidewise and then passed over in language that is as understated as it is lovely, these are images that sear into the brain. Master Georgie is full of such moments, horrors painted with an exquisite brush.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　--Mary Park

From Booklist
English novelist Bainbridge has ingenuity in spades; her fans love her inventiveness in storytelling. They love her, too, for her consistent quality no matter how offbeat her plot or unique her expression. Her latest novel is in the historical fiction vein. Technique is the calling card here as Bainbridge limns the life of one George Hardy, a physician and amateur photographer in mid-nineteenth-century Liverpool, who volunteers his services in the far-off Crimean War. But the reader gets to know quirky, elusive Georgie not through his own words or even through his own mind but as he is perceived by three other people in his life: Myrtle, a foundling who was brought up as his sister; Pompey, his assistant; and Dr. Potter, his brother-in-law. The portrait of Georgie that emerges is rendered in the various shades of his significance to these individuals: what he means to each of them, and why. Bainbridge's prose is as concise and penetrating as poetry, and her historical setting rings with authenticity.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Brad Hooper

From Library Journal
Bainbridge (Every Man for Himself, LJ 9/15/96) begins her story in 1846 in Liverpool, England. Myrtle is an orphan, taken in and fussed over by the Hardy family until it gets a dog. She stays on as a servant of sorts and becomes smitten with Georgie, the son of the house. Although she follows him everywhere, he rarely acknowledges her, which does not cool her determined adoration. Georgie becomes a doctor, and Myrtle becomes the mother of his children when his own wife is unable to produce an heir. When Georgie volunteers for medical service in the Crimean War, Myrtle goes with him. Even learning that Georgie prefers men does not dampen her unrequited love. Though ascertaining who is speaking can be difficult, as a different character narrates each chapter, this story is well researched and well written. It includes particularly vivid descriptions of the war and the Victorian era, including the sexual undertones and overtones of the day. Recommended.?Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island, Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Watch Hill

From AudioFile
The Crimean War is the backdrop for the story of Master Georgie, told in turn by a physician, a photographer and the girl who loved him. As if relating the intense remembrance of his own war experience, Paul McGann gives a compellingly personal and intimate reading of the text. The brutality of that war is made more hideous by his even reading and by the innocent quality of his voice. Some of the characters are given personas that offer a change of tempo. Now and then, McGann injects a feminine range and a lighthearted speed. But the three characters who speak are not different in voice from each other, and the listener has the burden of differentiating among them. J.P.

Book Dimension
Height (mm) 222 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 Width (mm) 152
作者简介 Beryl Bainbridge is the distinguished author of The Birthday Boys and Every Man For Him-self.She has four times been nominated for the Booker Prize and twice won the Whitbread Prie for fiction.She lives in London.
媒体推荐 Bainbridge's laconic, effortless style does not call attention to itself. The virtues of traditional storytelling, engaging and credible characters, imaginative plotting, and a powerful and moving theme are much in evidence. Master Georgie can be read in an hour or two, yet it may reverberate in the reader's consciousness long after its poignant final page. -- The Boston Globe, Robert Taylor

The marvelous trick Ms. Bainbridge pulls off is that she tells her story so elliptically that you have to pay attention to her every word. No conversation is wasted. Nothing is described merely to illustrate. -- The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

[Bainbridge is] a writer so original and so firmly in control of her art. -- The New York Times Book Review, Francine Prose
编辑推荐 Beryl Bainbridge seems drawn to disaster. First she tackled the unfortunate Scott expedition to the South Pole in The Birthday Boys; later (but emphatically pre-DiCaprio) came the sinking of the Titanic, in Every Man for Himself. Now, in her 3rd historical novel (and her 16th overall), she takes on the Crimean War, and the result is a slim, gripping volume with all of the doomed intensity of the Light Brigade's charge--but, thankfully, without the Tennysonian bombast. "Some pictures," a character confides, "would only cause alarm to ordinary folk." There's a warning concealed here, and one that easily disturbed readers would do well to heed: Master Georgie is intense, disturbing, revelatory--and not always pretty to look at.

Bainbridge's narrative circles round the enigmatic figure of George Hardy, a surgeon, amateur photographer, alcoholic, and repressed homosexual who counters the dissipation of his prosperous Liverpool life by heading for the Crimean Peninsula in 1854. His journey and subsequent tour of duty are told in three very different voices: Myrtle, an orphan whose lifelong loyalty to her "Master Georgie" becomes an overriding obsession; Pompey Jones, street urchin, fire-eater, photographer, and George's sometime lover; and Dr. Potter, George's scholarly brother-in-law, whose retreat from the war's carnage and into books takes on a tinge of madness.

United by a sudden death in a Liverpool brothel in 1846, these characters plumb the curious workings of love, war, class, and fate. In between, Bainbridge frames an unforgettable series of tableaux morts: a dying soldier, one lens of his glasses "fractured into a spider's web"; a decapitated leg, toes "poking through the shreds of a cavalry boot"; two dead men "on their knees, facing one another, propped up by the pat-a-cake thrust of their hands." Glimpsed as if sidewise and then passed over in language that is as understated as it is lovely, these are images that sear into the brain. Master Georgie is full of such moments, horrors painted with an exquisite brush. --Mary Park

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