The Eloquence of Desire, PPB

Price: $14.95

Description

Set in the 1950s, The Eloquence of Desire explores the conflicts in family relationships caused by obsessive love, the lost innocence of childhood and the terror of the Communist insurgency in Malaya. Richly descriptive and well-researched, the story told by Amanda Sington-Williams unfolds as George is posted to the tropics in punishment for an affair with the daughter of his boss. His wife, Dorothy, constrained by social norms, begrudgingly accompanies him while their twelve year old daughter Susan is packed off to boarding school. Desire and fantasy mix with furtive visits, lies and despair to turn the family inside out with Dorothy becoming a recluse, George taking a new lover, and Susan punishing herself through self-harm. The Eloquence of Desire is written in Sington-Williams' haunting and rhythmical prose.

PRAISE FOR THE ELOQUENCE OF DESIRE:

“I have just stumbled onto the nicest surprise”

Susan Abraham

“an atmospheric novel with thought provoking themes”

Bookish Magpie

“A good read”

Book Pleasures

“Wow! Amazing novel...”

Ana Carter, Reviewer, Canada

“THE ELOQUENCE OF DESIRE is an engrossing and atmospheric novel. This story of a married couple in the 1950s banished to Malaya after the husband’s affair with the boss’s daughter has the sharp edge, clarity and narrative drive of a Somerset Maugham novel.

“But Amanda Sington-Williams brings her own distinctive voice to the material. The descriptions of Malaya evoke the people, landscape and climate vividly and sensuously. The sounds and smells are almost tangible and there is a palpable background of unease and tension as the political situation constantly threatens to explode into violence.

“At the same time the writer has a wonderfully compassionate and insightful view of her all too human and believable characters. This is particularly true with George, the husband. On one level, this man is a selfish serial adulterer but we are lead to understand his motives and he emerges as a complex, if fallible, human being. The same understanding is offered to all characters, major and minor.

“Thoroughly recommended!”