The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
Mary Renault Book Discussion
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on January 03, 2007, 11:25:05 pm ---The Persian Boy wasn't one of my favorites either. Why I recommended The Last of the Wine. :-\
--- End quote ---
Thanks, :) I'll give it a shot.
Kerry:
Just found the following blurb on the Net re "Friendly Young Ladies," by May Renault. Never knew it existed until just now. Sounds like a fun read:
"Elsie, sheltered and naive, is seventeen and unhappy. Stifled by life with her bickering parents in a bleak Cornish village, she falls in love with the first presentable young man she meets -- Peter, an an ambitious London doctor. On his advice she runs away from home and goes to live with her sister Leonora, who escaped eight years earlier. But there are surprises in store for conventional Elsie as her sister has a rather bohemian lifestyle: not only does Leo live in a houseboat on the Thames where she writes Westerns for a living, she shares her boat, and her bed, with the lovely Helen. When Peter pays this strange menage a visit, turning his attention from one 'friendly' young lady to the next, he disturbs the calm for each of them -- with results unforeseen by all ...Mary Renault wrote this delightfully provocative novel in 1943 partly in answer to the despair characteristic of Radclyffe Hall's the Well of Loneliness. The result is this witty and stylish social comedy."
First read Radclyffe Hall's immortal "Well of Loneliness" some 40 years ago, and loved it (my Mum had read it before me! LOL). Not exactly a jolly read!
injest:
?? I had never heard of it either?
Kerry:
I sit here with my copy of “The Last of the Wine,” in eager anticipation of lively discussion to follow. What modus operandi should we adopt for our little book club? Should we discuss one chapter at a time? Though there are 28 chapters, they are each relatively short, yet jam-packed with lots of potentially exciting discussion-fodder. As I write this, you guys are fast asleep in bed. Should I start the ball rolling? OK then, here we go!
If I have read “The Last of the Wine” previously, it must have been many, many years ago, because as I read chapter 1 tonight, nothing sounded familiar to me. And as a result, I was not at all prepared for the jarring emotional reaction I experienced, just half-way through page 2. I literally found myself bawling like a baby. Crying out loud. I’ve not had a reaction like that since my first reading of Brokeback Mountain. Here are the two paragraphs that knocked me for six:
“On the day of my birth, my father’s younger brother, Alexias, died in his twenty-fourth year. He, hearing that a youth called Philon, with whom he was in love, had been taken sick (with the plague), went at once to him; meeting, I have been told, not only the slaves but the boy’s own sister, running the other way. His father and mother had already perished; Alexias found the lad alone, lying in the basin of the courtyard fountain, where he had crawled to cool his fever. He had not called out to anyone to fetch his friend, not wishing to endanger him; but some passers-by, who had not cared to go very near, reported that they had seen Alexias carrying him indoors.
This reached my father after some time, while my mother was in labour with me. He sent over a reliable servant who had had the plague already; who, however, found both the young men dead. From the way they were lying, it seems that in the hour of Philon’s death, Alexias had felt himself sicken; and, knowing the end, had taken hemlock, so that they should make the journey together. The cup was standing on the floor beside him; he had tipped out the dregs, and written PHILON with his finger, as one does after supper in the last of the wine.”
I am literally speechless . . .
“. . . so that they should make the journey together.”
This has such timely relevance for us; we, who are also living at a time when plague is at large in the land.
Emotional ramifications for Alexias, the narrator, with the weight of this tragic legacy to bear, from his very first day of life?
“. . . and written PHILON with his finger. . .”
Comments on chapter 1?
injest:
Alexias had SO much to live up to in his life...truly as someone said "He couldn't satisfy his father no how." How can you live up to that? To that legend that holds such a place in his father's heart? It is impossible to defeat a dead person...
And to know growing up that you weren't wanted. NOTHING takes that back. What does that do to a person?
The first line really catches me…
When I was a young boy, if I was sick or in trouble, or had been beaten at school, I used to remember that on the day I was born my father wanted to kill me.
Everything he did in his life was colored by that thought….that he was not wanted. And the belief that he was not loved (although I think his father did….he just didn’t know how to show it)
The story of Alexias (the uncle) and Philon touches me so much…even the way it is presented…not as a ‘gay’ thing…just a normal accepted even admired relationship. And the nobility and love they showed….Philon didn’t call for Alexias…wanting to protect him, and I wonder if Alexias really felt himself getting sick or did he just love Philon so much he couldn’t bear for him to go on that journey alone?
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