num_pages: 165
description: Lena can’t run a home, and she can’t run her husband. When Ben sleeps with their au pair girl, Lena’s jealousy is as much a jealousy of the girl’s domestic efficiency as of her sexuality. Their relationship slides, as Ben the scientist retreats more and more to his lab. Lena, for her part, drinks more, talks more, meets Eli, who is much younger than she is. Against the background of these adult events, another torment at least as sharp is going on. The sons of the marriage, Alan and Michael, closely observed, show how unhappy a childhood can be. At the same time the children are responsive to a physical world which they alone inhabit. Ben’s sudden illness brings the relationship to a crisis which sooner or later it was bound to reach. Elaine Feinstein’s novel has the clear qualities of her poetry: the author has the uncompromising ability to develop the uniqueness of her characters. Her writing does not suggest that there are any easy answers, or philosophies to apply to the problem of people’s living together. In this her writing has an unusual truth. Elaine Feinstein’s poetry has been included in a number of anthologies and her first collection was published by the Goliard press in 1966. Donald Davie has this to say: ‘In a Green Eye is a report on the state of the Nation…it will be a very long time before we see a first collection so distinguished.’ In the same year she edited a selection of John Clare’s poems. More recently she contributed a selection to Faber’s Poetry Introductions I and has translated the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetayeva for the first British publication of her work. This is Elaine Feinstein’s first novel.
language: English
title: The circle
titlecomplete: The circle
genres: Fiction
ratings_count: 9
awards: awardedAt: 28800000
name: Booker Prize
category: The Lost Man Booker Prize Longlist
publisher: New Authors Limited