The Beast Arrives.
Good news and bad news. Today I am the proud owner of the novel “The Questing Beast” by R.P.Lister, published by Chapman and Hall, London 1965. The bad news is that there is not a scrap of biographical information on the book jacket. Does the man have a Salinger complex (pre-dating Salinger)?
This is the blurb from the jacket...
“It is through the ironic eyes of Michael Mendel, jovial “king of film”, that we view in this novel the feckless progress of Pellinew. Invalided out of the army in the early part of the last war, Pellinew becomes a civilian in London. He is a man apparently without aim or ambition, innocent and impulsive in the conduct of his life. Unequipped as he seems to face the rigours of wartime London (and reader will realise, from Mr.Lister’s admirable evocation, that wartime London is more than just the setting of this book) he continually surprises. He surprises by his jobs, which are always fatuous and yet clearly satisfy him; by his friendships – with Mendel himself; with Waterfield, a radical intellectual editor; with Dinnock, an enquiring American psychiatrist for whom, absurdly, Pellinew types. But above all, Pellinew surprises us by his attachments. His attraction for women is difficult to understand. Marie is beautiful, clever and sophisticated; Elaine is pretty, nice and rather silly. Both these women, widely different in every aspect, want Pellinew; his reaction to them, which is unassuming and sublime, is somehow quite appropriate.
The Questing Beast is a relaxed book. Intricately worked out, it reads with deceptive simplicity. Mr. Lister’s characters are all perfectly realised, and they interact upon each other in just the right way."
I like that! “A relaxed book”. Just what I need.
|