The book opens with brisk humor in generally everyday setting, but soon unexpected intrigue sets in without warning, the reader is sent off on a long (and fascinating) digression about 18th century feminist cults, and then immediately carried off on into a most exciting and indescribable adventure story at whiplash-inducing pace, dense with mythology and strangeness. Though published in 1976 when she was 59, Carrington chose an alter-ego a generation older, a plucky nonagenarian who wants only to retire to Lapland amongst snow and sled dogs, but instead is shipped off to a cultish rest home by a family impatient to have her out of the way at minimal cost, only to become embroiled in unexpected plots. Here is her epitaph in the Telegraph:īorn in Britain, she eloped with Max Ernst, hung out with Picasso and Dali, fled the Nazis, escaped from a Spanish psychiatric hospital and later settled in Mexico, where she built a reputation as one of the most original and visionary British artists and writers of the 20th century.Īt the time, she was a couple months from turning 92, the age of Marion Leatherby, the protagonist of The Hearing Trumpet. Though I only heard about her through a post on the Writers No One Reads tumblr, it seems that she was far from unknown. Leonora Carrington died only a month and a half ago at the age of 94, a surrealist and remarkable traveler across the 20th century.
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