Rowing Lesson by Anne Landsman
Pregnant with her first child, Betsy Klein is summoned from her home in the United States to her father's hospital bed in South Africa. Harold Klein is sensual, irascible, a passionately committed doctor, and a complex husband and father. As Betsy sits and waits for him to stir from his coma, she is compelled to imagine his life. Fatherless and skinny, Harold Klein had to struggle to assert himself in his family, and, later, to become a doctor and to win the respect of his Boer patients.We first meet him as a young man on a formative, sexually charged excursion with his friends on the Touw, a river to which he often returns. That is where he later teaches his little daughter to row, and finally, where he makes his last metaphoric passage. "The Rowing Lesson" is an utterly convincing and vivid portrait of a consciousness and a life, shot through with a daughter's fierce empathy and exasperation. By the heartbreaking end of the novel, it seems inconceivable that we will not meet Harold Klein directly, that he will never wake up, so powerfully has he been brought to life.
Anne Landsman is the author of the novel, The Devil's Chimney, published by Granta in 1998 and nominated for four awards. Originally from South Africa, she lives in NYC with her husband and two children.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781862079892 |
| ISBN 10 | 1862079897 |
| Title | Rowing Lesson |
| Author | Anne Landsman |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Granta Books |
| Year published | 2008-02-04 |
| Number of pages | 224 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |