From Library Journal
According to Malcolm Elwin's introduction, Powys's 1935 novel is "the story of men and women whose characters have been made or marred by the loss of their first loves and first faiths, of their struggle to readjust themselves, and of the devastation created by the struggle."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
The novels of John Cowper Powys are like none other, containing the romantic extravagance and comic exuberance of the great nineteenth-century novels with the self-conscious depth and introspection of the great Modernists.
Maiden Castle portrays in pointillist detail the complexities of sexual and romantic feeling that bedevil an eccentric cast of characters, and explores the psychological idiosyncrasies that fuel their hopes and dreams, fantasies and failures.
At the center of the novel is the aptly named Dud No-man, a historical novelist widowed after a yearlong unconsummated marriage to a woman who continues to haunt him. Inspired by pity and his own deep loneliness, Dud takes Wizzie Ravelston, an itinerant circus performer, into his home and heart. Their awkward yet endearing efforts to create a life together unfold in counterpoint to the romantic and familial relationships that sizzle and simmer in the village of Dorchester. Yet even as the characters in
Maiden Castle struggle with the perplexities of love, desire and faith-readjusting their sights and affections-it is the looming fortress of Maiden Castle that exerts the otherworldly force that irrevocably determines the course of their lives.
4th in the series of novels
