“If it weren’t such a pleasure to read, I’d say that Lord Jim at Home—read by a novelist, like me—was an instrument of torture. It’s that good.”
Description
“A brilliant, chilling picture of the English middle class at home.” —Illustrated London News
When Dinah Brooke’s second novel, Lord Jim at Home, was first published in 1973, it was described as “squalid and startling,” “nastily horrific,” and a “monstrous parody” of upper-middle class English life. It is the story of Giles Trenchard, who grows up isolated in an atmosphere of privilege and hidden violence; who goes to war, and returns; and then, one day—like the hero of Joseph Conrad's classic Lord Jim—commits an act that calls his past, his character, his whole world into question.
Out of print for nearly half a century (and never published in the United States), Lord Jim at Home reveals a daring writer long overdue for reappraisal, whose work has retained all its originality and power. As Ottessa Moshfegh writes in her foreword to this new edition, Brooke evokes childhood vulnerability and adult cruelty “in a way that nice people are too polite to admit they understand.”
Reviews
“[A] brilliant forgotten novelist . . . [a] superb book . . . a ferocious comedy of middle-class dysfunction, [it] was published to controversy in 1973 . . . Rich in grotesquerie, including several comically repulsive sex scenes, it has the unhinged realism of a fairground mirror . . . Lord Jim at Home is a masterpiece.”
"A classic that has lain dormant for fifty years. Ahead of its time, and now looking timeless, it has resurfaced with éclat. It is short and shocking . . . [an] alarming, accomplished tale."
“This gripping tale of power, cruelty and all the consequences—the title’s reference to Joseph Conrad’s novel hints at the themes—was first published in 1973, and it seems extraordinary that it has been largely forgotten until now . . . This novel [is] full of horrors but energetic, funny and tense as a spring . . . Lord Jim at Home, inspired by a real story but full of the kind of truth only fiction can deliver, plants its devilish brilliance deep in the reader and won’t let go.”
