In this stunning debut novel, English playwright Edward Carey crafts a modern Gothic tale around the crumbling Observatory Mansions and its reclusive, eccentric tenants.
Upon its publication in England, it was a literary sensation, and John Fowles called it easily the most brilliant fiction I\'ve seen this year..
Reminiscent of Beckett, Ionesco, and Millhauser but startlingly original, Observatory Mansions is also unexpectedly beguiling.
When Anna Tapp arrives among them she stirs their souls, bringing long forgotten memories to the surface-and arousing fears that this new resident intends to provoke a metamorphosis.
The other tenants are equally as odd: his mother and father, who haven\'t interacted in years; a man who continually sweats and cries; a recluse who prefers television to reality; and a woman who behaves like a dog.
When not practicing inner and outer stillness, Francis steals the cherished possessions of others to add to his private museum.
One of them is Francis Orme, who earns his livelihood as a living statue.
Once the Orme family\'s magnificent ancestral estate, Observatory Mansions is now a crumbling apartment complex, home to an eccentric group of misfits.
Illustrations.
Reminiscent of Beckett, Ionesco, and Stephen Millhauser, Observatory Mansions is the British literary sensation that John Fowles called easily the most brilliant fiction I\'ve read this year.
In this stunning debut novel, English playwright Edward Carey crafts a modern Gothic tale around the crumbling Observatory Mansions and its reclusive, eccentric tenants
