num_pages: 768
description: Life in the English country house, at the turn of the century, is the world that Ivy Compton-Burnett made inimitably her own. Her themes are family conflict and individual self-interest, her power-struggles are fought out, politely and devastatingly, through the nuances of drawing-room conversation, through what is said--and what is left unsaid.In A Family and a Fortune the power of money and the bizarre and terrible effects of death and inheritance are examined, while Parents and Children reveals the suffocating claustrophobia existing within an extended late Victorian upper-middle-class family. In A God and his Gifts, published in 1963 and her last completed work, conventional morality is turned on its head in the shape of the wilful and arrogant Hereward Egerton. To the listening ear, these Ivy Compton-Burnett novels will play a rare music, subtly attuned to the most disturbing notes of the human comedy.
language: English
title: A First Omnibus
titlecomplete: A First Omnibus
genres: Fiction
ratings_count: 4
publisher: Penguin Uk