Bereavements

Bereavements

by Richard Lortz
Bereavements

Bereavements

by Richard Lortz

eBook

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Overview

Those who repliedthe curious, the disturbed, theopportunisticwere writing to Mrs. Harrington-Smith Evans, one of the ten wealthiest women in the world whose only child, a teenage boy, had died a mysterious death.

Pretentious, theatrical, wantonly self-dramatized, increasingly deranged in her grief, Mrs. Evans indulges in all the extravagant expressions of bereavement that money can buy: a seamless glass coffin; an embalming secret the pharaohs of ancient Egypt must have dreamed of; and a tomb so costly and exquisite, Shan Jahan's ghost surely groaned in its envy.

Finally, the ad: in retrosepect so silly andembarrassingshe needn't kill herself to die. But if she found him, a surrogate son might ease her grief, forestall her encroaching madness.

From the many respondents, her choice narrows down to three: Angel, an illiterate boy from New York's Spanish ghetto; Martin, a handsome, fatally ambitious young actor; and disarming Bruno, barely eighteen, an aspiring novelist who writes her perfumed letters in an absurd 19th century prose.

The Rivalries, the passions, the bizarre events that follow this strange entourage include murder, suicide, and a "haunting" like no other in this world or the next.

As he did in Lovers Living Lovers Dead, the author, tongue-in-cheek, mixes "comedy and ancient terror" in a lyrically layered style that critics call "a frightening lightness of tone...as eerie as the plot itself." But Bereavementsalso has its serious side. As its final pages chill us with the supernatural-as-metaphor, it is clear we are nearing the end of an extraordinary love story: one not eros but agapeone that distinguishes movingly between a love that is love, and a love that is Love.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940013770638
Publisher: The Permanent Press
Publication date: 01/12/1983
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
File size: 560 KB

About the Author

Richard Lortz died unexpectedly on November 5, 1980. He was sixty-three years old. A playwright and painter as well as a novelist, his prose combined the lyricism and theatricality of Tennessee Williams and the surrealism of Max Ernst. In addition to his extraordinary talent, he possessed great artistic integrity. While open to other ideas, he had his own sense of asthetics, would not compromise them, and on more than one occasion turned down substantial book and film contracts because of his unwillingness to relinquish control to those whose artistry he doubted. As his publishers, we surely miss him.
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