A Jest of God

Description

'An almost perfect book' MARGARET ATWOOD. Whenever I find myself thinking in a brooding way, I must simply turn it off and think of something else. God forbid that I should turn into an eccentric. Rachel Cameron is a shy, retiring schoolmistress, tethered to her overbearing invalid mother. Thirty-four and unmarried, she feels herself edging towards a lonely spinsterhood. But then she falls in love for the first time, and embarks upon an affair that will change her life in unforeseen ways.

Margaret Laurence (1926-1987) grew up in the small prairie town of Neepawa, Manitoba, Canada. Recognised as one of the greatest Canadian writers, her masterwork is the Manawaka sequence of five novels of which A Jest of God is the second.

A Jest of God holds a special place for me... I found it an almost perfect book, in that it did what it set out to do, with no gaps and no excesses. Like a pool or a well, it covers a small area but goes down deep... plain, self-contained, elegant in form, holding within it the essentials of life' -- Margaret Atwood Authentic and powerful. The dialogue is full of nice ironies and the narrative finely paced * TLS * It's not hard to see why its female readers welcomed and cherished it... this is not a feel-good book but Rachel is portrayed with exceptional insight and subtlety which feel relevant still' * Sunday Herald * Laurence remains, for many readers, the defining conscious of 20th-century Canadian literary fiction as well as a major influence on Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. It is easy to see why... This stylistically sophisticated narrative [is] tender and sympathetic but never sentimental' * Irish Times *