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Grove Press
January 2013
On Sale: January 8, 2013
448 pages
ISBN: 0802120725
EAN: 9780802120724
Kindle: B009NY471C
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction Family Life
Radical and uncompromising, Umbrella is a tour de force from
one of England’s most acclaimed contemporary writers, and
Self’s most ambitious novel to date. Moving between Edwardian London and a suburban mental
hospital in 1971, Umbrella exposes the twentieth century’s
technological searchlight as refracted through the dark
glass of a long term mental institution. While making his
first tours of the hospital at which he has just begun
working, maverick psychiatrist Zachary Busner notices that
many of the patients exhibit a strange physical tic: rapid,
precise movements that they repeat over and over. One of
these patients is Audrey Dearth, an elderly woman born in
the slums of West London in 1890. Audrey’s memories of a
bygone Edwardian London, her lovers, involvement with early
feminist and socialist movements, and, in particular, her
time working in an umbrella shop, alternate with Busner’s
attempts to treat her condition and bring light to her
clouded world. Busner’s investigations into Audrey’s illness
lead to discoveries about her family that are shocking and
tragic.
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