Year: 1958
Place: London
Publisher: Secker & Warburg
Edition: 1st
Language: EN
Pages: 340
Condition: VG
Cover condition: G
Binding: HC
Illustrated: Book Cover design by BIRO [Val Biro (1921–2014)]
Ft: 20,5x14x3 cm. 415 gr.
- The works of Edgar Mittelholzer have by now established themselves as an enduring and increasingly popular feature of contemporary writing, and THE WEATHER FAMILY is possibly the most exuberant book that Mr. Mittel holzer has published so far. Caroline Larch, who is only 20, falls in love with David Harben, a schoolmaster of 42. But her Aunt Clarice, who lives in the same house in Barbados, a frustrated divorcee hungry for men, also falls in love with him. David feels himself too old to marry Caroline, and is repulsed by the greedy immoderation of Clarice. So he has a coloured girl friend in the town and flirts with Eva Cranston who runs the smart Dapper Club. Caroline's younger sister, Leila, and her brothers, Aubrey and Peter, all manage to get more obvious fun out of life than Caroline, who is not interested in boys of her own age.
As we can expect from Mr. Mittel-holzer, the events which lead to the novel's wild climax in a torrential and surf-mad hurricane are intricate and involve a varying sequence of human relations.
The absorbed interest of the whole Larch family in the weather, with every one taking their turn at checking barometers and rain gauges, give to the book many scenes of intimate humour. With the Larches, their concern for the weather takes precedence over every thing.
THE WEATHER FAMILY is a bold novel by a writer who is never afraid of his own inventive powers. It is also a story of insistent physical excitement: the reader is aware throughout of wind, heat and sea stimulating and caressing the body, vibrant as sunlight on waves. Here we feel is a life in which man's contact with nature is always more real than either family or society.
