Sign-In
Cart
The Face of Innocence
Paperback
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN13: 9780571271429
Publisher: Faber Finds
Published: Jul 15 2010
Pages: 252
Weight: 0.61
Height: 0.57 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
The Face of Innocence, first published in 1951, tells the tale of Harry Camberley, his oldest friend - the unnamed narrator - and Harry's beautiful fiancee Eve. Both men fall in love with Eve at first sight, but it soon becomes clear that her grasp on reality is slipping; she prefers to lose herself, and those around her, in fantasy. Talked into subterfuge by Harry, his friend begins to wonder if Eve is a conventional girl fallen on hard times, or if there are darker secrets in her past. When the three take a holiday on the French Riviera, Eve's peculiarly open deceitfulness takes a new turn, and this time the consequences will be disastrous if Harry discovers the truth.
William Sansom said of this book:
The author of The Face of Innocence might very well be confused with the author in The Face of Innocence: indeed, there are many similarities. There must be, for most novels are based, however much they are thereafter reshaped, on a wisp of personal experience. Let me say first, then, that the Eve, the woman in the book, is more than a wisp. I have had the debatable pain and assuredly the pleasure of meeting about five of her in the course of my life; and have heard the strains of several more passing here and there.
I wrote The Face of Innocence whilst living in a Victorian house in North London. It had a garden, left half-wild by the war, and these surroundings stimulated what I believe to be a most important need in literature today - to find magic in what are called 'ordinary' things.
Also from
Sansom, William
Also in
Literary Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales Vol. 1 (Loa #26): The Pioneers / The Last of the Mohicans / The Prairie
Cooper, James Fenimore
Hardcover
The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume I: American Tabloid, the Cold Six Thousand; Introduction by Thomas Mallon
Ellroy, James
Hardcover
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Paperback
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback
The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk
St Aubyn, Edward
Paperback