The Girl on the Landing
by Paul Torday
- Used
- Hardcover
- Signed
- first
- Condition
- Good/Good
- Seller
-
Goring-by-Sea, West Sussex, United Kingdom
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009. Hardcover. Good/Good. 2009. First Edition. 297 pages. Signed by the author. Pictorial dust jacket over purple cloth. Flat signed by author to label on title page. Pages remain bright and clean with minimal tanning and foxing. Binding remains firm. Minor pen inscription to front free endpaper. Boards have light shelf wear with minor corner bumping and crushing to spine ends. Unclipped jacket has light edge wear with minor chipping and creasing. Spine noticeably sunned.
Reviews
On Mar 14 2015, CloggieDownunder said:
“How comfortable that idea is: that everything wrong with the human race is the result of some malfunction, some microscopic chemical change in our brains, some evolutionary wrong turning in our genetic code.”
The Girl On The Landing is the third novel by British author, Paul Torday. For ten years, Elizabeth has been married to Michael Gascoigne, ten years that Elizabeth says “demonstrated that at least I had commitment, although in my bleaker moments I thought that it might just be inertia”. Michael, boring but very wealthy, decent and reliable, begins to change after a weekend in Ireland, and Elizabeth discovers a spontaneous, romantic man she wishes had been present for those early years. Even when she discovers the reason for this profound change, and the danger it poses, she is reluctant to give this new man up.
This novel has a rather slow-moving start, but this tempo reflects the tone of the Gascoigne marriage, and as later events are described, the pace certainly picks up. Torday uses a twin narrative: Michael, who is eventually revealed to be an unreliable narrator; and Elizabeth, whose perspective demonstrates just how easily one can be ignorant of the true nature of one’s partner. Torday touches on the covert racism of the English Gentleman’s Club, as well as the medical profession’s opinion of what is “normal”, mental disorders and the drugs used to treat them: “…what type of human can conceive that a drug which obliterates the patient’s identity so entirely is a cure for anything?”
Torday said he trying to find the “ultimate novel” and wrote compulsively: each of his seven novels is a different genre, and The Girl On The Landing has been described as a subtle ghost story. This edition also contains a reading guide and a preview of the next book Torday wrote: The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers. Said Charlie Summers makes a cameo appearance in this novel: Torday’s characters tend to do this. This thought-provoking novel is another brilliant Torday offering.
(Log in or Create an Account first!)
Details
- Bookseller
- World of Rare Books (GB)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 1708694732IEV
- Title
- The Girl on the Landing
- Author
- Paul Torday
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Good/Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Publisher
- Weidenfeld & Nicolson
- Date Published
- 2009
Terms of Sale
World of Rare Books
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
World of Rare Books
Biblio member since 2009
Goring-by-Sea, West Sussex
About World of Rare Books
Wob sells rare and collectable books on behalf of charities. Our team of booksellers are happy to deal with any enquiries and aim to provide same-day dispatch for all orders.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Chipping
- A defect in which small pieces are missing from the edges; fraying or small pieces of paper missing the edge of a paperback, or...
- Title Page
- A page at the front of a book which may contain the title of the book, any subtitles, the authors, contributors, editors, the...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Shelf Wear
- Shelf wear (shelfwear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. This damage is...
- Sunned
- Damage done to a book cover or dust jacket caused by exposure to direct sunlight. Very strong fluorescent light can cause slight...
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...