Research Catalog

Title

The Gustav sonata / Rose Tremain.

Author

Tremain, Rose

Publication

London : Chatto & Windus, 2016.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

241 pages; 23 cm

Summary

'It was a game of love and death. Neither of us will ever speak about it. It's locked inside us.' Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in Switzerland, where the horrors of the Second World War seem distant. He adores his mother but she treats him with bitter severity, disapproving especially of his intense friendship with Anton, the Jewish boy at school. A gifted pianist, Anton is tortured by stage fright; only in secret games with Gustav does his imagination thrive. But Gustav is taught that he must develop a hard shell, 'like a coconut', to protect the softness inside - just like the hard shell perfected by his country, to protect its neutrality. But despite this hard shell, nothing in Gustav's life can be called neutral. Older, and increasingly curious about his absent father, Gustav discovers the traces of an erotic love affair - traces which still glow white-hot even now. Fierce, astringent, profoundly tender - and spanning the twentieth century - Rose Tremain's beautifully orchestrated novel explores the big themes of betrayal and the struggle for happiness, and above all, the passionate love of a childhood friendship as it is tested over a lifetime.

Subjects

• Male friendship > Fiction
• Friendship > Fiction
• World War, 1939-1945 > Switzerland > Fiction
• Friendship in children > Fiction

Call Number

JFD 16-4283

ISBN

• 9781784740030
• 1784740039
• 9781784740047
• 1784740047

LCCN

2016387870

OCLC

919104245

Author

Tremain, Rose, author.

Title

The Gustav sonata / Rose Tremain.

Publisher

London : Chatto & Windus, 2016.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Research Call Number

JFD 16-4283