The Book of Ebenezer Le Page (New York Review Books Classics)
G.B. Edwards
Language: English
Pages: 400
ISBN: 1590172337
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Ebenezer Le Page, cantankerous, opinionated, and charming, is one of the most compelling literary creations of the late twentieth century. Eighty years old, Ebenezer has lived his whole life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, a stony speck of a place caught between the coasts of England and France yet a world apart from either. Ebenezer himself is fiercely independent, but as he reaches the end of his life he is determined to tell his own story and the stories of those he has known. He writes of family secrets and feuds, unforgettable friendships and friendships betrayed, love glimpsed and lost. The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a beautifully detailed chronicle of a life, but it is equally an oblique reckoning with the traumas of the twentieth century, as Ebenezer recalls both the men lost to the Great War and the German Occupation of Guernsey during World War II, and looks with despair at the encroachments of commerce and tourism on his beloved island.
G. B. Edwards labored in obscurity all his life and completed The Book of Ebenezer Le Page shortly before his death. Published posthumously, the book is a triumph
of the storyteller’s art that conjures up the extraordinary voice of a living man.
"Imagine a weekend spent in deep conversation with a superb old man, a crusty, intelligent, passionate and individualistic character at the peak of his powers as a raconteur, and you will have a very good ideas of the impact of The Book of Ebenezer Le Page...It amuses, it entertains, it moves us...” –The Washington Post
"A true epic, as sexy as it is hilarious, it seems drenched with the harsh tidal beauties of its setting...For every person nearing retirement, every latent writer who hopes to leave his island and find the literary mainland, its author–quiet, self-sufficient, tidy Homeric–remains a patron saint." –Allan Gurganus, O Magazine
your clothes. I like to see you well dressed.’ ‘Oh my dear, my dear,’ she said, ‘as if I meant that! I am only saying what the people would say. They would say far worse things about me. “I wonder what on earth that Ebenezer Le Page, who is an honest, decent fellow and work hard and look after his mother until she die, can see in that Liza Quéripel, who for all her grand ways come from the lowest of the low and is a gad-about and a fly-by-night and think of nothing but to make a show of herself.
grandmother didn’t mind my father smoking: she said she liked the smell of smoke on a man. He got on well with his belle-mère, my father. He would often go along on his own to see how she was, or take me with him. ‘Hello, ma mère!’ he’d say and take her in his arms and kiss her on the forehead. He was big and strong and she was very small and frail against him. ‘Ah, comment s’en va, mon Alfred?’ she’d say. ‘Pas trop mal,’ he’d say. My mother thought more of her father than of her mother. She
thought the Germans wouldn’t bother about little Guernsey; but I have never been one to hope for the best when the worst is staring me in the face. The question everybody was asking was whether to stop in Guernsey, or go to England. That is, if they could. One minute it was said everybody would have to go; and the next minute that nobody would be able to. At last it seemed that anybody would be able to go who wanted to. Then nobody could make up their minds if they wanted to or not. I think at
dinner, and a chap would wake him up with a cup of tea. There was always a big, brown enamel teapot of tea on the boil. When they wasn’t asleep, those who was off duty sat round and yarned. Raymond was glad just to listen, and be among the others. In his mind, they was all grand fellows. He said, ‘One minute they would be telling smutty stories about the Royal Family, and the next talking about their mothers and sisters with tears in their eyes. They were innocent.’ Private Harry Whitehouse was
among the rubble in the gully, chipped off the edges, and stuck them up all along like spikes. I suppose he thought it was ornamental, but I thought it was a silly idea myself. Anybody could jump over the wall, anyway. It was those blessed stones was my undoing. By then my poor old mother was on her last legs; or rather, she was hardly on her legs at all. I had to help her even to go to the back, and from her chair by the fire to her bed. Besides, she was very low in spirit. I was glad for