Synopsis
This ingenious and inventive novel—nominated for the Book Prize Long List for 2001 from the award-winning author of Jem (and Sam)—at once comprises an autobiography of Aldous (Gus) Cotton, an English civil servant with breathing problems and chronic sexual learning difficulties, and an erratic history of modern England. It is also and more so the story of Helen Hardress, the serious, slim, blond young woman who quickens Gus’s pulse when they first meet in Normandy one summer in the early 1960s as she will, off and on, for the next twenty years. For no one’s life is quite the same once Helen Hardress has passed through it. Least of all, that of the long-pining Gus. “Reading Ferdinand Mount is as much fun as pink gin.”—Michael Gorra, New York Times Book Review “Fairness is funny, touching, picaresque, decked out with eccentric characters, improbable, artful and, rarest of all, unfailingly entertaining.”—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World “A quick, witty read with resonance.”—Baltimore Sun
Publishers Weekly
Following the well-received Jem (and Sam), Fairness is the fifth and final volume of British author Ferdinand Mount's Chronicle of Modern Twilight series though a familiarity with its predecessors is not required. At the center of the story, which spans the latter half of the 20th century, are the wistful, sexually inept Gus Cotton and the love of his life, Helen Hardress. She is a left-leaning blonde dynamo who gets involved in everything from the British miners' strike to a high-profile pedophile hunt. A big hit in England, this and other of Mount's novels have earned him comparisons to Evelyn Waugh. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.