Sargeson, Frank.

"Frank Sargeson wrote fiction over almost half a century. During most of this time he also wrote occasional criticism. In form this varied from book reviews to imaginary dialogues, addresses at meetings or on the radio, opinions expressed in interviews. In subject matter he ranged widely, from appraisals of individual writers to mote general issues of literary form and content and the social milieu from which they arose. The relevance to his own fiction is usually apparent. Wriers considered include D.H. Lawrence, Sherwood Anderson, Henry Lawson, Rolf Boldrewood and Olive Schreiner, besides fellow New Zealanders as Katherine Mansfield, Janet Frame, Dan Davin, James Courage, Bill Pearson, Ronald Hugh Morrieson. He was particularly concerned with the societies which rew on the nineteenth-century European colonial frontiers, and with the writers they produced. All his opinions bear the unmistakeable mark of his own cast of mind. ..."--Book jacket.

Sylvia Penhurst is forced to bear the burden of her unhappy marriage, her ardent temperament subdued by her husband's cold unfeeling behavour. Then suddenly, to her yearning, caged heart comes love, love of the kind her husband cannot, will not give. The temptation to surrender to her passionate nature is too much but her happiness is short lived. For Sylvia has a small daughter and she realizes too late that in reaching out for a moment's happiness she has destroyed a child's world.

At thirty-nine, Nancy Kissel had it all: glamour, gusto, garishly flaunted wealth, and the royal lifestyle of the expatriate wife. Not to mention three young children and what a friend described as "the best marriage in the universe." That marriage -- to Merrill Lynch and former Goldman Sachs investment banker Robert Kissel -- ended abruptly one November night in 2003 in the bedroom of their luxury apartment high above Hong Kong's glittering Victoria Harbour. Why?

"Sargeson was a prolific letter writer, and this selection of 500 letters ranges over half a century, from 1927 to 1981. The letters vividly capture his life and times, his milieu and his personality. Frank loved gossip, could be bitchy and peevish, but also kind, affectionate, funny, ribald, astute"--Publisher information.