Bernice Rubens

Resting in a hospice for the terminally ill, Annie is dying. Supported by her oldest friend Clemmie, who listens and sympathises, she looks back over her life, revealing her daughter's search for her father—an American GI—and her return from the US with a man of whom Annie is highly suspicious.

From Library Journal Luke Wakefield's business has gone bankrupt, his wife has left him (for another woman)his life, he thinks, has been one big failure. Then one day, as he is waiting in line at the post office, the well-dressed man ahead of him drops dead. In the commotion that follows, Wakefield leaves with a sealed letter the dead man left unmailed. He steams it open and reads it. At once his life is filled with new meaning and energy, becoming a crusade to find the body of the man's murdered wife, to fill his life with the mysterious details of theirs. Like I Sent a Letter to My Love (St. Martin's, 1978), Rubens's latest work is based on an imaginary correspondence. But unlike the earlier novel, a romance of sorts, Mr. Wakefields's Crusade is a novel of both real and psychological suspense, telling of a lonely man's obsession, deception, possibly even madness. Highly recommended. Marcia G. Fuchs, Guilford Free Lib., Ct. Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --

Bernice Rubens is one of England's elder stateswomen of literature, and I,Dreyfus upholds her reputation for producing stately and polished fiction with a serious moral intent. For Rubens, the anti-semitism which rocked France at the turn of the last century has not gone away. This time it crops up in 1990s England. Sir Alfred Dreyfus is the headmaster of a Church of England school. His only sin has been one of omission--he has concealed his Jewish origins to further his career. However, the novel opens with Sir Alfred imprisoned for a crime far more heinous. Literary agent and fellow Jew Sam Temple (names are emblematic for Rubens, and Temple does indeed prove to be an emotional haven for Dreyfus) visits the prisoner in his cell and persuades him to write a memoir of his downfall. The resulting narrative reveals a man coming to terms with his religious identity, and reclaiming his family's past. It is a deeply felt account of spiritual renewal, and should be read as an expertly crafted parable. Fans of psychological realism may balk at the evil anti-Semites she pits against her hero, but will rally at the sly humour of her ending. --Lilian Pizzichini

As they await word about college, three iseparable friends who are the force behind their high school football team explore the nature of their special relationship.

Bronwen's life has been tainted by her killing of a man who tried to rape her in the lane behind her parents' house. She tells nobody about the incident but her guilt manifests itself in the frequent nosebleeds she has at awkward moments. Fifty years later, she is still living her life sentence.

Pick his brains - you know it makes sense. Well, what would you do if your mentor and best friend, herald as the 'greatest novelist of our time', suddenly expires, and you find yourself bereft of a cherished companion's wit and wisdom. Your twelve-year stretch of writer's block, too, now seems like a life sentence. For Martin Peabody, the answer is simple. You remove your dead friend's brain, syphon off his thoughts, and use them as inspiration to revive your career and write a fitting testament to a great man - an autobiopsy, if you like. This superbly sharp and funny novel shows Booker-winner Bernice Rubens at her best.

186 pages ; 23 cm

Gladys Sperber, the family "martyr," is the oldest of five "failures" who, because her mother is "too busy," virtually raises her siblings. "She would take her food when the others had eaten. . . . She would wait for their happiness before she felt entitled to her own, and she would have looked after their dying if she'd been able." The title refers to Gladys's destructive symbiotic relationship with her mother: the biblical book of Ezekiel observes that fathers eat sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. Although the novel, which covers two world wars, evokes the limited choices available to women in a man's world and is replete with manifestations of mother-daughter interdependence (an adult Gladys shares a bedroom with her widowed mother), it doesn't probe the psychodynamics of that relationship. The result is a contrived work that depresses rather than engrosses.

4 halfsisters meet at the sickbed of their domineering and mostly absent father. The 4 women of different generation, background, religion and sexual orientation seem to have nothing more in common than the genes of Stephen Upton. During their stay, however they find out they may need sisterhood more than they would ever thought possible. Elizabeth, the oldest, is succesfull in her career, but one can't say the same thing for her personal life. She remains unmarried, and has only ever been in love with a man out of her reach. Mary, the second daughter, accomplished quite the opposite. She has married multiple times in search for... For what actually? but has only found love in the arms of her last husband, who was killed in an accident. Alex is the 3rd daughter, married with children, she is easily mistaken for a naiv housewife, but there is more to her than one might think. And then there is the young Ronnie, the daughter of the chicana housekeeper who has the upton blue eyes. As time passes the sisters find out they have more in common than a father, or even the horrible secret he has laid upon every one of them...

Mrs. Pickering and Mrs. Walsh didn't want their husbands to die but they did want to survive them for the cruise. It would be such fun: just the two them together on a boat, decently and thankfully widowed at last. But the sea holds hidden perils for women of a certain age...

After years of faithful public service - as yet unrewarded by a much coveted knighthood - Hugh Brownlow accepts the 'easy' position of UN liaison officer in Java. His presence is an annoyance to the motley group of jaded Europeans working in the provincial town of Djogjakarta, for he is sincere and enthusiastic. But after two unexplained deaths, Brownlow's life takes a very different turn.

All her life, Amy Evans has struggled against that unkind gift of fate - ugliness. A squat nose stubbed like a plasticine afterthought on her face, a chin too long and eyes straining to meet each other, form a sad picture that dooms Amy to a life of solitude and lovelessness. Now in her fifties, Amy lives alone with her crippled brother, both prisoners of the hopes and aspirations of their youth. Then Amy makes a final bid for happiness, a last ditch attempt to meet someone she can love . who might love her. Suddenly her life takes on dizzying new dimensions as she explores untrodden paths of sexual awareness in an all-or-nothing gamble for dangerous and delicious success. Read preview >

London documentary filmmaker Angela Morrow struggles to adjust to a new life after her film producer husband leaves her for another woman.