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The Cockatoos Patrick White

The Cockatoos By Patrick White

The Cockatoos by Patrick White


£7.70
New RRP £11.95
Condition - Well Read
Only 2 left

The Cockatoos Summary

The Cockatoos: Shorter Novels and Stories by Patrick White

The wild and beautiful birds of the title are the cockatoos who - welcome trespassers in a suburban garden - transform the lives of those they condescend to visit. The Davorens, who for seven years have lived in total silence, are united suddenly in mutual worship of their exotic guests. Miss Le Cornu, the lonely spinster for whom Davoren's calls have become a needed ritual, regards the birds' descent on her chimney-pot as a privilege little short of divine grace. Savage but kind-eyed, tearing with fierce beak at his chosen victim, the cockatoo appears in many disguises in this masterly collection of short novels and stories. Essentially, the book's theme is intimacy, that close relationship in which possessive love can invade and cripple the spirit. In A Woman's Hand, and elderly man married to a proud, manipulative woman perceives in another man's magnificent isolation the stillness and contentment that he will never achieve. Allegedly raped by a mystery intruder, the respectable daughter of respectable and doting parents in The Night the Prowler sets out to violate the social codes that chain her to an unreal identity. In Sicilian Vespers, a doctor's wife on holiday attempts to exorcise her childhood specters in what could be a blasphemous and joyless act of adultery or, on the other hand, a surrender to hysterical fantasy. So complete and richly furnishes is the writing of Patrick White that ideas and images within each story are as satisfying as the whole; each story is as nourishing as the book itself. The Cockatoos achieves a majesty to match the grandeur of his finest novels.

About Patrick White

Patrick White was awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature, 'for an epic, psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature'.

Additional information

GOR001556139
9780224009928
0224009923
The Cockatoos: Shorter Novels and Stories by Patrick White
Used - Well Read
Hardback
Vintage Publishing
19740613
307
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book. We do our best to provide good quality books for you to read, but there is no escaping the fact that it has been owned and read by someone else previously. Therefore it will show signs of wear and may be an ex library book

Customer Reviews - The Cockatoos