Nina Bawden’s portrait of a family in crisis raises fundamental questions about parents and children, offering tentative hope, but no tidy solutions
Circles of Deceit
Written by Nina Bawden
- Shortlisted
- The Booker Prize 1987
- Published by Macmillan
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Nina Bawden’s powerful exploration of deception gradually unfolds a moving story about lies and truths, forgery and fidelity, love and loss
A painter who is ‘bothered by bills and artistic conscience in about equal measure’ specialises as a copyist, painting modern versions of Old Masters. Major figures in the foreground of his crowded life canvas are Clio, his new bride, and her young boy; Helen, the first wife who left him but has never really separated; and his mother, who observes everything with a splendidly caustic humour. In the background, always, is his own silent son.
Nina Bawden
Nina Bawden was the author of more than 50 books for adults and children and was perhaps best known for her children’s novel Carrie’s War (1973), a story of wartime child evacuees
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