Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal and Other Stories

✍ Scribed by Bates, H E

• Book ID: 108883351
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Year: 2014
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 156 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781448215249

✦ Synopsis

First published in 1961, Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal and Other Stories is a collection full of light and shade, setting sensitive character studies against Bates's signature vibrant, delicate imagery. A fussy and obsessive golfer encounters a troubled young woman at a wind-swept beach in 'Lost Ball', a retired Colonel, isolated and suffering from dementia, suddenly rejects the friendship of his charming neighbour when she acquires a television in 'Where the Cloud Breaks'.

The title story, 'Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal,' takes its name from a Tennyson poem and is a picture of social change in post-war rural England. It draws a portrait of a sheltered and uncultured butcher's wife exposed to a new tenant in the countryside – a flamboyant homosexual who delights in throwing large parties.

Of the collection as a whole, the Times Literary Supplement says the stories 'all confirm Mr Bates's position in the first rank of contemporary short-story...