I'm Expecting to Live Quite Soon

By Paul West

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: B000OEE3D2
• Release Date: January 1970
• Publisher: Harper & Row
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Novel...

Alley Jaggers, Paul West's first novel about the bizarre Jaggers family of Shalethorpe, was received with wild enthusiam by the critics. Bold comparisons were made to Beckett, Joyce, Updike, and Gunter Grass, among others. I'm Expecting to Live Quite Soon takes us where Alley left off; Alley's locked up for murder, Dad's put away in the Old Folks', and Dot...an earthy, foul-mouthed Midlands housewife who joins Molly Bloom, and Brecht's Mother Courage in the pantheon of great female characters...is left to her own grand devices. A job at the local pub leads to a highly unusual form of prostitution when Dot meets the Armpit Man. Deliberately pregnant, she further outrages the village by taking in a black lodger; when baby Hopalong arrives, the scorned mother and child set off on a strange journey south only to discover trouble all over again, and yet another virtue to win from necessity. This ebullient novel exuberantly and bawdily celebrates life's richness and ripeness as well as the value of words., whether for raving, communicating, or simply fending people off. Forcing his characters toward existential extremes. Paul West works their estrangement into an image...a profound and festively funny image...of human persistence, courage, and vision. This sequel to Alley Jaggers stands as a brilliant novel in its own right, a more penetrating, more accessible, more moving book than Alley.