Résumé du livre

Zusatztext Brilliant . . . [West was] an artist who wrote wonderful prose! who took chances with language and cadence! and who wrote poetically! even of prosaic subjects. The New Republic Informationen zum Autor Rebecca West (1892-1983) was a novelist, biographer, journalist, and critic. She published eight novels in addition to her masterpiece Black Lamb and Grey Falcon , for which she made several trips to the Balkans. Following World War II, West also published two books on the relation of the individual to the state, called The Meaning of Treason and A Train of Powder . Klappentext Set during World War I on an isolated country estate just outside London! Rebecca West's haunting novel The Return of the Soldier follows Chris Baldry! a shell-shocked captain suffering from amnesia! as he makes a bittersweet homecoming to the three women who have helped shape his life. Will the devoted wife he can no longer recollect! the favorite cousin he remembers only as a childhood friend! and the poor innkeeper's daughter he once courted leave Chris to languish in a safe! dreamy past-or will they help him recover his memory so that he can return to the front? The answer is revealed through a heartwrenching! unexpected sacrifice. The text of this Modern Library Paperback Classic was set from the first American edition! published in 1918! and features original illustrations by Norman Price. Chapter I "Ah, don't begin to fuss!" wailed Kitty. "If a woman began to worry in these days because her husband hadn't written to her for a fortnight! Besides, if he'd been anywhere interesting, anywhere where the fighting was really hot, he'd have found some way of telling me instead of just leaving it as 'Somewhere in France.' He'll be all right." We were sitting in the nursery. I had not meant to enter it again, now that the child was dead; but I had come suddenly on Kitty as she slipped the key into the lock, and I had lingered to look in at the high room, so full of whiteness and clear colors, so unendurably gay and familiar, which is kept in all respects as though there were still a child in the house. It was the first lavish day of spring, and the sunlight was pouring through the tall, arched windows and the flowered curtains so brightly that in the old days a fat fist would certainly have been raised to point out the new, translucent glories of the rosebud. Sunlight was lying in great pools on the blue cork floor and the soft rugs, patterned with strange beasts, and threw dancing beams, which should have been gravely watched for hours, on the white paint and the blue distempered walls. It fell on the rocking-horse, which had been Chris's idea of an appropriate present for his year-old son, and showed what a fine fellow he was and how tremendously dappled; it picked out Mary and her little lamb on the chintz ottoman. And along the mantelpiece, under the loved print of the snarling tiger, in attitudes that were at once angular and relaxed, as though they were ready for play at their master's pleasure, but found it hard to keep from drowsing in this warm weather, sat the Teddy Bear and the chimpanzee and the woolly white dog and the black cat with eyes that roll. Everything was there except Oliver. I turned away so that I might not spy on Kitty revisiting her dead. But she called after me: "Come here, Jenny. I'm going to dry my hair." And when I looked again I saw that her golden hair was all about her shoulders and that she wore over her frock a little silken jacket trimmed with rosebuds. She looked so like a girl on a magazine cover that one expected to find a large "15 cents" somewhere attached to her person. She had taken Nanny's big basket-chair from its place by the highchair, and was pushing it over to the middle window. "I always come in here when Emery has washed my hair. It's the sunniest room in the house. I wish Chr...