Product Description

A moving and intensely felt examination of the steps to which we will go to seek protection and security in others. Returning to haunted Cornish landscapes familiar from other Gale novels, it is the story of individuals in search of a family. Dido, the nine-year-old heroine and emotional centre of Patrick Gale's latest painful comedy, knows that the adults who surround her, the adults who should know better, depend on her for happiness. So who is she to turn to when her short life turns upside down and tragic family history threatens to repeat itself. Eliza, the clever, depressive aunt who has brought Dido up, and whose brilliant academic career has foundered due to the demands of unlooked-for motherhood, tries and fails to give Dido the happy normal childhood she never had herself. Her ex-husband Giles needs Dido back in his life, feeling it has lost all meaning, all substance, without her. Then there is Pearce, the new love interest in Eliza'a life, desperate to give Eliza and Dido the security and protection they need. But will Eliza let him? Does she love him or is she using him to restart a stalled career?Only Dido, unheard of in the clamour of others' needs, has the power to make or break the happiness of these children in adult clothing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17646 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Review
'What is delightful about Gale's fiction is that it so warmly and convincingly illuminates ordinary lives and interests. His staples are difficult loves, botched careers, tangled family histories -- mainstream stuff, with the offbeat as an extra' Daily Telegraph'Exerts the unmistakable force of a novelist in the process of discovering a new, strong voice. With this alarming and technically very skilful romance, he is decidedly a man to watch' Mail on Sunday'Flawless. Gale is a master of context and background, flinging wide the perspectives of his dramatic personae with exemplary patience and generosity. In A Sweet Obscurity's world of powerful, vatic females, where men are dreamers or ditherers, Cornwall, so far from being the land of failure, achieves a solidity and integrity whose graces are triumphantly redemptive.' TLS'This is arguably Gale's most questioning, troublesome work. It amuses, startles and occasionally bewilders. A Sweet Obscurity is worth every minute of your time.' Independent'Intriguing and impressive. His greatest strength lies in his sensitive evocation of those transient, often indefinable states that reveal the truth about people's deepest desires and discontents. A memorable study of a child forced cruelly, even tragically, to grow up too soon" Sunday Times

About the Author
Patrick Gale was born on the Isle of Wight in 1962. He spent his infancy at Wandsworth Prison, which his father governed, then grew up in Winchester. He now lives on a farm near Land's End. As well as writing and reviewing fiction, he has published a biography of Armistead Maupin, a short history of the Dorchester Hotel and chapters on Mozart's piano and mechanical music for H.C. Robbin Landon's The Mozart Compendium. His most recent novels are Rough Music and Tree Surgery for Beginners.

Customer Reviews

" A verse of softer pleasures and a sweet obscurity"
When reading Patrick Gale, one always gets a warm, calm, fuzzy feeling. His novels conjure visions of fireside chats on cold winter evenings, and the affectionate bliss of domestic life. A Sweet Obscurity, although not his best work, certainly invokes such images, while also presenting a rather dark, but hopeful look at modern, untypical relationships and families. Like its predecessor, Rough Music, landscape plays a distinct role; Gale's sophisticated Londoners are transported to Cornwall where they discover both an alternative rhythm of life and a healthier way of living.

Eliza is a musicologist who has lost her way. She's wrecked her marriage with a foolish liaison, and is now living in some squalor in a council flat, while taking care of her young niece, Dido. Since her mother's death in a climbing accident, Dido has lived with Eliza, but Eliza is haunted by fears that her sister's medical problems might have been passed on to the child. Eliza "faces the bossy arrival of daylight with a kind of horror," and she sees with a stark clarity how cruel a sentence she and Dido are living under. She dearly loves her niece, but she is lonely, and short of money. Painfully honest, she acknowledges how much she misses her time as an Oxford student researching Elizabethan madrigals.

Giles is her estranged husband, an operatic counter tenor. He still loves Dido and claims, when it suits him, a paternal role in the child's life. A professional singer, he is haunted by his mother's sexual abuse and funnels his insecurities into his singing. He has a kind of cozy, simplistic domestic arrangement with his girlfriend Julia, but in all honesty, he still loves Eliza. The madrigal songs serve to cast their spell on Giles - "a kind of decorously erotic melancholy, ironing smooth his troublesome thoughts." Eliza and Dido were Giles' pets: He housed them and fed them and was solicitous of their welfare, but this darkens when we glimpse Giles' self-centered, and inappropriately sensual relationship with Dido.

Julia is Giles girlfriend, assistant to his conniving lesbian agent, Selina Bryant. Julia, discovering that she is pregnant, is "torn between the urge to love, and the cruel impulse to enlighten." She has grown used to the image of herself as practical and unflinching, but is forced to re-evaluate her life when she realizes that Giles doesn't love her. Pearce, perhaps the most likeable character, is a rugged, middle-aged Cornish beef farmer. After his father's death, he has reluctantly taken over the family farm, spends lonely evenings calling up pornographic websites, and worries that the days of small family farms are numbered. Pearce's eventual meeting with Dido and Eliza, when they holiday in Cornwall, shape the last half of the story. Pearce has learned "not to strive." He has an inner life, but he is not forever troubled to change or improve his outer one."

All the characters have an instinct to cling to security rather than daring to entertain alternatives. Quieter love amid "country goodness" and a "sweet obscurity" stand for what all five characters are pursuing - a place of safety in an insecure and vainglorious world. Classical music also features prominently, such as a hilarious account of a modern staging of Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream, and Eliza's chance encounter with an amateur madrigal group in Cornwall. Sweet Obscurity is a little over-long - clocking in at almost five hundred pages - and the narrative tends to meander towards the end. Although not as taught and tightly structured as Rough Music, the novel still does a fine job of evoking the ties that bind people, and transient, often indefinable states that reveal the truth about people's deepest desires and discontents. Mike Leonard July 04.

Another great read from Patrick Gale
Another great read from Patrick Gale. A Sweet Obscurity is a tale of disparate adults all with their own needs and hope. Some are living in London and some in Cornwall - we know that somehow their lives will overlap and so we are compelled to read on...... At the heart of the book is Dido, a feisty nine year old who at times acts as parent to her stepmother/biological aunt Eliza. We know that there is some mystery about Dido's mother but we are kept in suspense until the very end. The plotting is ingeniously worked out and the whole work is a very satisfying read with a "feel good" ending.

I can understand why Gale has such a firm fan base even though he will never feature in the more prestigious literary prize lists. Based on my other book reviews I thought this book deserved three stars - but that seemed a bit mean so I have upgraded it to four stars. (I find the star ratings the most difficult part of reviewing!)

Easy but compelling
I have to stress that I really enjoyed reading this book. The three star rating is because it is not a literary triumph, it’s not a book I would thrust into the hands of anyone else, and it’s not a book I would rave about, or possibly even remember for very long.

I read this having read Rough Music, recommended by a friend, and having seen Gale talk at a literary festival. He was lovely, and I have my signed copy of tree Surgery for Beginners waiting on my bookshelf. But this isn’t the sort of book I usually read.

There are flaws in the book, for me. Cherubism is touched upon, but in such a fleeting, almost half-hearted way, that I was left wondering why it was featured at all. There was nothing I found offensive in the portrayal of this condition; it just didn’t seem to serve a purpose. The ends relating to that strand of the story, were left dangling unconvincingly, for me.

Gale creates characters you like and characters you don’t. Mainly characters I didn’t like, though I really enjoyed reading about them. I liked Pearce, though he was quite ineffectual. I liked something about Eliza, though she was a bit of a disaster. I liked Giles in part, though heaven knows why!!

This is a book in which a lot of disturbed or lonely individuals seek love and approval in varying degrees. At the end, everything is comfortable, but I don’t feel happiness. I get the impression it could all easily unravel, and that is refreshing.

I love the cosiness of this book. I love Cornwall, I’m from Cornwall, and I like to escape into the outside image of Cornwall sometimes. Gale indulges in that. He lives here, so I’m sure he knows it’s not as quaint and friendly as he sometimes paints it (I can’t remember the last time I was encouraged to pour my heart out to a kindly soul on a bus!), but it’s a lovely world to read about. Some of the details of Cornwall and the towns are so vivid, and known to locals - that’s nice to read!

Though I know I don’t seem to praise this book very highly, I must say that it had a rare effect on me, in that I was gripped by it. Not edge-of-the-seat stuff, just couldn’t put it down or wait to get back to it each time I was interrupted! I was absorbed by the book. With even the most fantastic books I have read, this is not the case, so Gale certainly has a gift for drawing his reader into the story.

Thoroughly enjoyable reading.