Name: Prisoner in a Red-rose Chain
Rating: 3 (1 reviews)
ISBN: 9780399148644

Jeffrey Moore

Romantic comedy meets giddy satire in this debut novel about a young English professor convinced that his destiny is mapped out on a page he once ripped from a book.

Prisoner in a Red-rose Chain

Winner of the 2000 Commonwealth Writer's Prize and the 1999 QSpell Award for Best First BookRights sales: German, Dutch, UK, French and US.Please don't imagine, as I did for so long, that the contents of the Page will somehow set in motion the events that follow. Life's not like that. Its course is not printed on a sheet of paper, ripped from a random book; only mystics and children would think otherwise.It is by no means clear just how much control Jeremy Davenant has over his own destiny. He's attractive, clever, hedonistic and generous, and he teaches (albeit with forged credentials) at a Montreal university. He even has a sabbatical coming up. Yet one glance from a dark lady in the street below, and his life veers into chaotic mischance and obsession.The trouble is, the world is full of signs for Jeremy. The Page-ripped out of an encyclopedia and given to him in childhood by his "uncle" Gerard-is supposed to chart out his life; and somehow the Zulu tyrant Shaka, the Indian love epic Shakantula, and the city of Shakhtyorsk in Ukraine all start to feature in his life-along with William Shakespeare and, of course, his Dark Lady.But Milena's life (not to mention her sexual identity) requires as much decoding as the Page, and Jeremy stumbles after her into farce, terror and-for a brief spell-bliss."Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chainis a gleeful satire on our times, a romantic comedy that deals with authentic obsession, an allusive paper chase through the maze of our culture." "Jeffrey Moore is a writer of rare elegance and wit, not averse to slapstick when it suits his purpose."

Prisoner in a Red-rose Chain

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