Аннотация

The biggest surprise – and disappointment – that life holds is that it is over so fast. The golden tomorrow, to which most people (usually women) put off their hopes rarely appears. This is the lesson learned by Helen McLean in her memoir. Details from a Larger Canvas is about a woman with the expectations of her time and class heavy upon her shoulders; in short, she is supposed to be much the same woman as her Rosedale matron mother-in-law whose life was bound up in sets of rules and whose life had little expression except in the form of materialistic acquisition and censure. Instead, Helen creates her own life – and, while painting a portrait of Margaret Laurence, finds a woman with whom she has common ground.

Аннотация

Short-listed for the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize Best Book Award, Caribbean and Canada Region A man of innate taste and discrimination, Edward has become an art dealer and collector of fine antiques and paintings. During his first six idyllic years he was the centre and focus of his mother’s existence. Betrayals and unhappiness in subsequent years have led him to form almost fetishistic attachments to beautiful objects, as a substitute for the human relationships that have invariably failed him. Now in his late forties, on a holiday in Sicily, Edward falls deeply in love with a young English-Italian artist, but he has not yet learned that there is a difference between loving and possessing.