The Jilkington Drama

The Jilkington Drama
Mittelholzer, Edgar
London, New York, Abelard-Schuman [c1965]
190 p. 23 cm

Menage à quatre: Katherine and German raised, profoundly Catholic daughter, Lili; Harry Jilkington, desperate for a divorce from absent wife so he can marry Katherine and widowed son, Garvin, obsessed with the memory of dead wife, and father of pre-pubescent Mary. Garvin pursues Lili in half hearted fashion. Plot superficially looks like La Ronde (i.e., Katherine makes love to Garvin, to “save” him; Harry and Lili, for a similar reason). As in all his novels, violence plays under the surface of events in the form of memories of the Second World War (Harry), Nazism (Katherine and Lili) and insanity (Garvin’s eccentricities evolve into suicidal madness in the final, bizarre effort to immolate himself with thousands of firecrackers). No resolution except the recitation of the date and time of Garvin’s death from severe burns. Unlike Dirk in KB, nobody seems wiser at the end of this; the abrupt ending signifies no purpose in returning to surviving characters. Again, heavy dialogue; stripped narrative, less natural description than in Guyana work.

H.D. Carberry Collection of Caribbean Studies
University of Illinois at Chicago Library
Daley Library - Special Collections/3rd floor (non-circ.)
PR9320.9.M5 J55 1965

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