The Wings of the Dove is a tale of desire and possession, of love and death. It is in essence a simple story, but one that opens up the great subject of art: life itself. To tackle this, James moves between fairytale storylines and the startlingly modern techniques of his testing late style. An unspeakable subtext lies beneath the silence. Distinct points of view and different centres of consciousness betray the dislocation of the social facade from the desolation beneath. For all the familiar signs, there is a gulf between glamour and the underlying threat of loss. The eternal triangle of...
When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils… Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and...
