The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story

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Overview

This powerful short novel describes the events of a single afternoon. Alwyn Tower, an American expatriate and sometime novelist, is staying with a friend outside of Paris, when a well-heeled, itinerant Irish couple drops in—with Lucy, their trained hawk, a restless, sullen, disturbingly totemic presence. Lunch is prepared, drink flows. A masquerade, at once harrowing and farcical, begins.

A work of classical elegance and concision, The Pilgrim Hawk stands with Faulkner’s The Bear...

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The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story

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More About This Book

Overview

This powerful short novel describes the events of a single afternoon. Alwyn Tower, an American expatriate and sometime novelist, is staying with a friend outside of Paris, when a well-heeled, itinerant Irish couple drops in—with Lucy, their trained hawk, a restless, sullen, disturbingly totemic presence. Lunch is prepared, drink flows. A masquerade, at once harrowing and farcical, begins.

A work of classical elegance and concision, The Pilgrim Hawk stands with Faulkner’s The Bear as one of the finest American short novels: a beautifully crafted story that is also a poignant evocation of the implacable power of love.

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Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews
Something of a writer's writer, Wescott has always had his critical admirers, and his new publishers have enlisted Michael Cunningham (The Hours, etc.) to introduce this reprint. Back in 1940, when this slim novel first appeared, Kirkus (October 15, 1940, p. 524) noted its lack of "popular" appeal, finding it "elliptic and elusive." "In leisurely, suggestive prose," Kirkus suggested, "Wescott tells a savage story of limited import but great fascination." This tale of the jaded world-wanderers, the Cullens, finds them engaged with their latest bizarre pastime: a falcon hawk, a "symbol" of "the empty relationship of her marriage." As we concluded back then: "Rarified, a little decadent, a little repellent, this is nonetheless beautifully handled."
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781590174579
  • Publisher: New York Review Books
  • Publication date: 8/16/2011
  • Series: New York Review Books Classics Series
  • Pages: 136
  • Sales rank: 779,096
  • Product dimensions: 5.00 (w) x 7.90 (h) x 0.50 (d)

Meet the Author

Glenway Wescott (1901–1987) grew up in Wisconsin, but moved to France with his companion Monroe Wheeler in 1925. Wescott’s early fiction, notably the stories in Goodbye, Wisconsin and the novel The Grandmothers (in which Alwyn Tower, the narrator of The Pilgrim Hawk, makes his first appearance), were set in his native Midwest. Later work included essays on political, literary, and spiritual subjects, as well as the novels The Pilgrim Hawk and Apartment in Athens (also available as an NYRB Classic). Wescott’s journals, recording his many literary and artistic friendships and offering an intimate view of his life as a gay man, were published posthumously under the title Continual Lessons.

Michael Cunningham is the author of five novels, A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (which won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction), Specimen Days, and By Nightfall.

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