Synopses & Reviews
A riveting novel about the remarkable life—and many loves—of author H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells, author of The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, was one of the twentieth century's most prophetic and creative writers, a man who immersed himself in socialist politics and free love, whose meteoric rise to fame brought him into contact with the most important literary, intellectual, and political figures of his time, but who in later years felt increasingly ignored and disillusioned in his own utopian visions. Novelist and critic David Lodge has taken the compelling true story of Wells's life and transformed it into a witty and deeply moving narrative about a fascinating yet flawed man.
Wells had sexual relations with innumerable women in his lifetime, but in 1944, as he finds himself dying, he returns to the memories of a select group of wives and mistresses, including the brilliant young student Amber Reeves and the gifted writer Rebecca West. As he reviews his professional, political, and romantic successes and failures, it is through his memories of these women that he comes to understand himself. Eloquent, sexy, and tender, the novel is an artfully composed portrait of Wells's astonishing life, with vivid glimpses of its turbulent historical background, by one of England's most respected and popular writers.
Review
"This novel is as scintillating, engaging, and multidimensional as the man whose life and character it faithfully animates . . . Lodge neatly shifts between narrative and probing interview, to reveal the intersections of writer, thinker, and man . . . Ultimately, this novel's sensitive and lively examination of its protagonist's relationships with women is what really fleshes out (so to speak) his attractive character." Christina Schwarz, The Atlantic
Review
"A terrifically enjoyable novel . . . A Man of Parts explores, with great verve, Wells's lifelong attempt to honor his own complexity, to be true to himself as a sexual being, a loving family man, a creative artist and an ambitious social thinker . . . Even if you're up on Wells's life and writings, Lodge makes his novel-cum-biography mesmerizing." Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
Review
"[A] smart, engaging novel . . . Lodge has made something of a specialty of intellectuals behaving badly in bed." Christopher Benfey, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Entertaining and persuasive . . . A Man of Parts allows Lodge to concentrate on comedy and character . . . [his] interest is in the private rather than the public Wells." Claire Tomalin, The New York Review of Books
Review
"A quirky and enchanting tale...
Therapy springs open like a brightly colored Chinese puzzle box, to become a funny and often touching meditation on faith, redemption, and existential doubt." --
Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Review
A smart, seductive novel of ideas...Lodge is at the top of his game. (
The Atlantic Monthly)
Synopsis
The subject of enthusiastic and widespread reviews, David Lodge?s fourteenth work of fiction displays the humor and shrewd observations that have made him a much-loved icon. Deaf Sentence tells the story of Desmond Bates, a recently retired linguistics professor in his mid-sixties. Vexed by his encroaching deafness and at loose ends in his personal life, Desmond inadvertently gets involved with a seemingly personable young American female student who seeks his support in matters academic and not so academic, who finally threatens to destabilize his life completely with her unpredictable?and wayward?behavior. What emerges is a funny, moving account of one man?s effort to come to terms with aging and mortality?a classic meditation on modern middle age that fans of David Lodge will love.
Synopsis
andquot;A trio of dazzling novels in a comic mode that the author has now made completely his own...a cause for celebration.andquot; -The New York Times Book Review
David Lodge's three delightfully sophisticated campus novels, now gathered together in one volume, expose the world of academia at its best-and its worst. In Changing Places, we meet Philip Swallow, British lecturer in English at the University of Rummidge, and the flamboyant American Morris Zapp of Euphoric State University, who participate in a professorial exchange program at the close of the tumultuous sixties. Ten years later in Small World, older but not noticeably wiser, they are let loose on the international conference circuit-along with a memorable and somewhat oversexed cast of dozens. And in Nice Work, the leftist feminist Dr. Robyn Penrose at Rummidge University is assigned to shadow the director of a local engineering firm, sparking a collision of ideologies and lifestyles that seems unlikely to foster anything other than mutual antipathy.
Synopsis
By all appearances, Laurence Passmore is sitting pretty. True, he is almost bald and his nickname in "Tubby", but the TV sitcom he writes keeps the money coming in, he has an exclusive house in Rummridge, a state-of-the-art car, a vigorous sex life with his wife of thirty years, and a platonic mistress to talk shop with. What money can't buy, and his many therapists can't deliver, is contentment. It's not the trouble behind the scenes of his TV show that's bugging him or even the persistent pain in his knee; it's this deeper, nameless unease. Is it a spiritual crisis or just one of the midlife variety?
Tubby's quest for the source of it will lead into an obsession with Kierkegaard, brushes with the police, gossip-column notoriety, and strange beds and bedrooms worldwide.
Synopsis
Euphoric State University with its whitestone, sun-drenched campus and England's damp red-brick University of Rummidge have an annual professorial exchange scheme, and as the first day of the last year of the tumultuous sixties dawns, Philip Swallow and Morris Zapp are the designated exchangees. They know they'll be swapping class rosters, but what they don't know is that in a wildly spiraling transatlantic involvement they'll soon be swapping students, colleagues, and even wives. Changing Places is a hilarious send-up of academic life, intellectual fashion, sex, and marriage by a writer Anthony Burgess has called "one of the best novelists of his generation."
Synopsis
David Lodge's novels have earned comparisons to those of John Updike and Philip Roth and established him as "a cult figure on both sides of the Atlantic" (
The New York Times).
Thinks . . . , his witty new novel about secret infidelities and the nature of consciousness, unfolds in the alternating voices of Ralph Messenger, director of the Centre for Cognitive Science at the University of Gloucester, and Helen Reed, a novelist and writer in residence at the university. Mutually attracted, the two end up in a moral standoff that is shattered by events that dramatically confirm the truth of Ralph's dictum: "we can never know for certain what another person is thinking."
Synopsis
Paradise, tourist style. It's a very long way from home.
Bernard Walsh is in Hawaii on family business, escorting his querulous father to the bedside of a long-forgotten aunt. His mission transports him from quiet obscurity in Rummridge, England, to a lush tropical playground, from cloistered solitude into the unfamiliar company of package tourists: honeymooners; young women looking for Mr. Nice; families nuclear and fissile. But it is the island itself that holds the most astonishing surprises, as an accidental encounter opens up to Bernard possibilities of life, and love, never dreamed of in his normally overcast habitat. Paradise News is an enchanting--and very funny--portrait of the late flowering of an honest man.
Synopsis
"A funny, intelligent, superbly paced social comedy." --
The New York Times Vic Wilcox, a self-made man and managing director of an engineering firm. has little regard for academics, and even less for feminists. So when Robyn Penrose, a trendy leftist teacher, is assigned to "shadow" Vic under a goverment program created to foster mutual understanding between town and gown, the hilarious collusion of lifestyles and ideologies that ensues seems unlikely to foster anything besides mutual antipathy. But in the course of a bumpy year, both parties make some surprising discoveries about each other's worlds--and about themselves.
Synopsis
A riveting novel about the remarkable life-and many loves-of author H. G. Wells.
H. G. Wells, author of The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, was one of the twentieth century's most prophetic and creative writers, a man who immersed himself in socialist politics and free love, whose meteoric rise to fame brought him into contact with the most important literary, intellectual, and political figures of his time, but who in later years felt increasingly ignored and disillusioned in his own utopian visions. Novelist and critic David Lodge has taken the compelling true story of Wells's life and transformed it into a witty and deeply moving narrative about a fascinating yet flawed man.
Wells had sexual relations with innumerable women in his lifetime, but in 1944, as he finds himself dying, he returns to the memories of a select group of wives and mistresses, including the brilliant young student Amber Reeves and the gifted writer Rebecca West. As he reviews his professional, political, and romantic successes and failures, it is through his memories of these women that he comes to understand himself. Eloquent, sexy, and tender, the novel is an artfully composed portrait of Wells's astonishing life, with vivid glimpses of its turbulent historical background, by one of England's most respected and popular writers.
About the Author
David Lodge is the author of twelve novels and a novella, including the Booker Prize finalists Small World and Nice Work. He is also the author of many works of literary criticism, including The Art of Fiction and Consciousness and the Novel.