Charles Arrowby, a vanity-driven theater director, retires to a secluded coastal house to write his memoirs and escape his past. This isolation backfires when he encounters Hartley Manners, a woman he loved decades earlier. Convinced she is a captive in a miserable marriage, Charles obsesses over "rescuing" her, disregarding her current reality and autonomy. His narration descends into self-delusion and jealousy, complicated by the unexpected arrival of former lovers and his cousin James, a Buddhist practitioner who serves as a spiritual foil to Charles’s ego.
Readers interested in the psychology of obsession and the unreliability of memory will find this book a clinical study of narcissistic self-deception. It appeals to those who enjoy seeing a protagonist’s internal logic crumble against external truth. The reader walks away with a stark understanding of how the human mind reshapes the past to justify present desires, and how the pursuit of a private fantasy creates wreckage for everyone involved.
Deep, inward-looking, contemplative, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Wisdom Collector. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1978
- Language
- EN
