Concluding

By Henry Green

Book Overview

Old Mr Rock a widower lives in a cottage with his granddaughter Elizabeth; his household includes Daisy the pig Ted the goose and Alice the cat but an additional member threatens in the person of Sebastian Birt the schoolteacher whom Elizabeth wants to marry. Birt teaches in the state institution for girls run by two authoritarian spinsters the inseparable Misses Edge and Baker.

One sunny summer's morning the morning of the Founders' Day Ball as Mr Rock goes up to the school to fetch his pig-swill for Daisy it is discovered that two of the girls have gone missing in the night. As he pursues the unfolding events of this crowded day and eavesdrops on the conversations up at the school and down at the cottage Henry Green subtly teases out all the hidden ambitions and lusts the suspicions and jealousies that are rife just beneath the placid surface of the institution. With an unmatched ear for dialogue and an absolute mastery in the depiction of character he imbues this apparently routine school day with a powerful charge of drama and superb comic effect.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1860460275
• ISBN13: 9781860460272
• Release Date: February 2003
• Publisher: Harvill Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

another masterpiece

another brilliant beauty by green, this one more enigmatic and mysterious than NOTHING or DOTING. set in a sort of training school for girls, the story circles around the disappearance of two girls; the cross-purposes between the school's two principals and a mr. rock who lives in a cottage on the school grounds; and also between mr. rock's daughter recovering from a breakdown and her romance with one of the school's instructors. all in the shadow of an impending school dance. what green nails as always is the way people speak and totally misunderstand each other, all the while creating a seamless setting with his lyrical, idiosyncratic prose. you end up feeling like you understand a little more the inexplicable dance of life.

Extraordinary and idiosyncratic

Henry Green's Concluding is an extraordinary novel. Remarkably idiosyncratic, it is a work that may not appeal to everybody equally. Green humorously, and tragically, presents the common misunderstandings that language and our private emotions provoke. Although natural beauty and light's dazzling improvisations illuminate the novel, the recurrent theme of what is secret, underground and buried offers a disturbing and unsettling contrast. Passions bloom abruptly through the dryness and formality of a community stifled by Rules and Directives. A striking example of Green's powers is the lunch episode in which the manipulative Principal Miss Edge feels a missing girl's corpse is buried underneath the azaleas and rhododendrons behind her table. This book deserves to be read and reread.

HENRY GREEN WAS BRILLIANT!!!!

If you love human beings and/or are one, you will love Henry Green's books! REAL stories, told in VERY imaginative ways, about REAL people expressing REAL EMOTION. Check out: Living, Loving, Nothing, Party Going, Caught, Doting, Blindness, Back, and Pack My Bag; A Self-Portrait -- all by Green!!!