The Visitor

by Maeve Brennan (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $16.60

  'An astonishing miniature masterpiece, except there is nothing miniature about the forces at work in a story as violent underneath as it is demure on the surface... Maeve Brennan is not like anyone but herself. The ferocity of her vision of femininity is hers alone. The variations in The Visitor on revenges taken for love withheld or love perverted will stay with the reader forever. And the sadness of both needs - for love, and for revenge' Nuala O'Faolain The Visitor is the haunting tale of Anastasia King, who, at the age of twenty-two, returns to her grandmother's house in Dublin - the very house where she grew up - after six long years away. She has been in Paris, comforting her disgraced and dying mother, who ran away from a disastrous marriage to Anastasia's late father, her grandmother's only son. It is a story of Dublin and the unkind, ungenerous, emotionally unreachable side of the Irish temperament. Recently found in a university archive, The Visitor was written in the mid-1940s but was never published. This miraculous literary discovery deepens the oeuvre of Maeve Brennan and confirms her status as one of the best Irish writers of stories since Joyce. 'To mention her in the company of Chekhov and Flaubert is only proper' Edward Albee

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $31.03

  'The Visitor is the work of a sure hand... and Brennan's prose is terse and exquisitely precise throughout... Only in the work of Emily Dickinson can the same ferocious vision - of love, pain, transgression and death - and economy of expression be found.' Guardian

  The Visitor tells the haunting tale of Anastasia King, who, at the age of twenty-two, returns to her grandmother's house in Ireland - the very house where she grew up - after six long years away. An atmospheric story of Dublin, it is also a dissection of the unkind, ungenerous, emotionally unreachable side of the Irish temperament.

  Recently rediscovered in a university archive, The Visitor was written in the mid-1940s but has never been published until now. Long championed by authors from Nuala O'Faolain and Clare Messud to John Updike, this miraculous literary discovery confirms Brennan's status as a master of the novella and one of the best storytellers since Joyce.

  'An astonishing miniature masterpiece, except there is nothing miniature about the forces at work in a story as violent underneath as it is demure on the surface ... The ferocity of her vision of femininity is hers alone. ' -Nuala O'Faolain