Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
London: Virago, 1993
Description
Laura is happily married, a mother and a successful novelist. Interweaving memory and reflection, this novel telescopes the whole of Laura's life - childhood, marriages, triumphs and disappointments - into one day. The author's novel Circles of Deceit was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Liz1564
I once took a psychology class when two students ran into a room, fought for a minute or so, and then ran out. Our professor then asked us to describe what we had just seen. No two people saw the same thing; not only were the physical features of the two students described differently, but even the
The novel takes place in one day, although the narrator Laura ties the threads together with references to the past. And she cautions us in page one: "You must believe what I tell you. If you don't, we have no future together and you might as well abandon this narrative and go and play golf or croquet."
Laura 's life is finally on an even keel. She has a happy second marriage, two grown and two young children, good friends, a lovely home and a career as a best-selling novelist. (The only serious problem is her son who was unfairly accused of bringing drugs into the country and is serving a short sentence in prison.) This is in contrast to the past when her teen years were challenged by the blitz and her twenties were filled with an unhappy marriage. As she reveals her memories of the past, and she did caution that we had to accept what she says, the events of the day show how others view what happened. What is the "truth" is a theme of the novel. Is truth absolute or really relative?
For example, Laura remembers she was stifled by her first marriage to an emotional abuser who criticized her wifely and motherly skills, her writing, her appearance. When she had a difficult pregnancy she recalls that he went on about how much more he had suffered during her delivery. Yet it turns out he made a very happy second marriage to a woman Laura liked so well that she gave up custody of her two children to them because she felt that they could provide a more secure home. So did she really give up her two small children because she had their welfare in mind or did she give them up to avoid the responsibility of raising them?
Then there is her mother who Laura remembers as practically perfect. But when the reader meets her she is a judgmental, nagging person who has little appeal. What is the real truth about Laura's relationship with her best friend? Will her second marriage survive when her second husband challenges her views of their relationshp? And is her son really the innocent bystander who got tricked into transporting drugs into England?
Bawden is at her best in this novel of truth and illusion
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sex of the students was disputed. Reading Walking Naked reminded me of this incident because no two characters, no matter how close they are, remember things the same way.The novel takes place in one day, although the narrator Laura ties the threads together with references to the past. And she cautions us in page one: "You must believe what I tell you. If you don't, we have no future together and you might as well abandon this narrative and go and play golf or croquet."
Laura 's life is finally on an even keel. She has a happy second marriage, two grown and two young children, good friends, a lovely home and a career as a best-selling novelist. (The only serious problem is her son who was unfairly accused of bringing drugs into the country and is serving a short sentence in prison.) This is in contrast to the past when her teen years were challenged by the blitz and her twenties were filled with an unhappy marriage. As she reveals her memories of the past, and she did caution that we had to accept what she says, the events of the day show how others view what happened. What is the "truth" is a theme of the novel. Is truth absolute or really relative?
For example, Laura remembers she was stifled by her first marriage to an emotional abuser who criticized her wifely and motherly skills, her writing, her appearance. When she had a difficult pregnancy she recalls that he went on about how much more he had suffered during her delivery. Yet it turns out he made a very happy second marriage to a woman Laura liked so well that she gave up custody of her two children to them because she felt that they could provide a more secure home. So did she really give up her two small children because she had their welfare in mind or did she give them up to avoid the responsibility of raising them?
Then there is her mother who Laura remembers as practically perfect. But when the reader meets her she is a judgmental, nagging person who has little appeal. What is the real truth about Laura's relationship with her best friend? Will her second marriage survive when her second husband challenges her views of their relationshp? And is her son really the innocent bystander who got tricked into transporting drugs into England?
Bawden is at her best in this novel of truth and illusion
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LibraryThing member thorold
Walking Naked reminded me of some of Anne Tyler's (much more recent) novels in its form: it describes a particularly hectic Saturday during which Laura and Andrew attend a Tennis game at Hampton Court, go to a Boat Race party, and then visit Laura's son in prison and her father in the country
Very interesting and intelligent writing, occasionally painful to read, but also often funny and perceptive.
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before rushing back to London for a domestic emergency. In the course of the day, Laura takes us back over her earlier life, her relationship with her friends Hilde and Rosie, her first marriage, and the development of her career as a novelist. She keeps on confronting herself and the reader with the large and small distortions that enter into different people's recollections of the same events, especially when they start to narrate them with a novelist's eye. The title comes from Yeats's poem, quoted as the epigraph to the book, in which the poet tells us that he has made his song into a richly embroidered coat, but "...there's more enterprise / In walking naked". Laura is constantly trying to peel off the garments that her literary instance makes her stick onto the narrative - and of course we as readers guess that there's a similar process going on between the narrator and the novelist, as we recognise that the salient points of Laura's life have a strong resemblance to the publicly known facts about Bawden's own career.Very interesting and intelligent writing, occasionally painful to read, but also often funny and perceptive.
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Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1981
Physical description
221 p.; 20 cm
ISBN
185381444X / 9781853814440
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