Just reading her obituary in the New York Times today. It doesn't seem as if she made much of a dent in the states, but reading the descriptions of her novels makes them sound really good and worth looking for. My kind of stuff, in other words. dark undercurrents, devastating portraits of family life, repellant characters, melancholy. what's not to love? i didn't want to put search/DESTROY, Classic/DUD in the thread title. seems like it would have been in poor taste since she just died. anyway, anyone?
― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 12 March 2005 16:35 (twenty years ago)
four months pass...
Alice Thomas Ellis is one of the best writers of our age. Her books have been described as dealing, almost always, with "chaos and old night." She is also, most of the time, very funny. A mighty tough lady and traditional Catholic, she had no use for the Modernist Church of the Council (Vat II). She said it produced only "sewage." But she wrote only one book on that subject, directly: ''The Serpent on the Rock". The peroration is worth the whole book. If you loved JP II, don't read it.
In my opinion, her best novel is her first: "The Sin Eater".
Sometimes she is a little abstruse, but I have enjoyed everything she's written and I've read nearly all of it. Even if, at the end, I've found myself asking what THAT was all about.
She has been compared with Flannery O'Connor, but, aside from the humor and shared Faith, they really aren't all that comparable. With O'Connor, Grace is always operating. In Alice Thomas Ellis it is more often the daemonic. That having been said, I believe they would agree with one another about the general state of things now.
If O'Connor must be brought into it, I would say that Ellis is a sort of combination Flannery and Evelyn Waugh.
One of her best and funniest is "The Summer House" (it's referred to as a trilogy, but it's a short one). It's a good place to start, although it isn't as dark as most of her other novels.
I'm angry that she died so comparatively young (look, I'm 67!). I was looking forward to at least another twenty novels.
― Neil G. Barclay, Thursday, 28 July 2005 18:28 (twenty years ago)
Cheers, Neil! Thanks for that. I will renew my efforts to find her books. Like I said, she didn't seem to have much of an impact here in the states. Not even in comparison with someone like Penelope Fitzgerald. However, that is never a sign of a writer's worth. That goes without saying.
― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 28 July 2005 20:49 (twenty years ago)
A Common Reader's website has several of her books, and most of them were on clearance a few months ago; I bought several for my wife, but she hasn't gotten around to them yet. Sounds like I might check
The Sin Eater out though.
― jedidiah (jedidiah), Friday, 29 July 2005 14:36 (twenty years ago)
two months pass...
Try "Fairy Tale" (don't be misled by title) and "The Inn at the End of the World" - my personal favorites. She has a very dry, ironic sense of humor.
Ellis also wrote a column that has been published as two books: "Home Life One" and "Home Life Two". These and other book are A Common Reader editions. (You can view archives of her columns at their web site and also buy her books there. I know that "Fairy Tale" is currently on sale there for around $4.00.)
― Lucinda Knox, Thursday, 29 September 2005 22:35 (nineteen years ago)