Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Coral Glynn

3.29 of 5 stars 3.29 · rating details · 541 ratings · 158 reviews

Coral Glynn arrives at Hart House, an isolated manse in the English countryside, early in the very wet spring of 1950, to nurse the elderly Mrs. Hart, who is dying of cancer.Hart House is also inhabited by Mrs. Prence, the perpetually disgruntled housekeeper, and Major Clement Hart, Mrs. Hart’s war-ravaged son, who is struggling to come to terms with his latent homosexuali...more

Hardcover, 210 pages

Published February 28th 2012 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 1,315)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Apr 09, 2012 Chuck rated it 3 of 5 stars

Set in England during the 1950s, this leisurely-paced novel has a much older feel to it, by virtue of its style and the fact that mid-century technology is either nonexistent or well hidden. In addition, the principal characters are appropriately old-fashioned. Given this context, one jarring element -- a brief Gothic-style scene at the end of Part One, which drives much of the subsequent tale -- seems a bit out of place.

Peter Cameron writes some luminous prose, but it deserves a better plot lin...more

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 17, 2012 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

1 like · like · see review

Mar 01, 2012 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

Peter Cameron has crafted an exquisite book about socially awkward people living in England in the 1950's. Reminiscent of the social examinations of the Bronte sisters, Coral Glynn reveals the solitary life of a shy, young woman working as a visiting nurse. When she suddenly finds herself married and suspected of a hideous crime, she flees to London and unwittingly finds the path to eventual happiness. Wonderfully written and drawn with insight and power.

9 likes · like · see review

Mar 17, 2012 Alice rated it 3 of 5 stars

Very good book. Written in a lyrical style, the book draws you in to a world (English countryside after WWII) unlike ours today. Large estates fall to disrepair; men drink too much but mostly keep a stiff upper lip and don't say much. The main female character suffers (no surprise there), but the book has a few twists and turns that you won't expect. I look forward to reading other books by this author.

2 likes · like · see review

Aug 22, 2012 Amy Warrick rated it 3 of 5 stars

What an odd little book. I don't know how to describe it, or explain what I liked about it. I'd have given it 3 1/2 stars if half-stars were available, but in the meantime it wasn't quite 4 star material, or maybe it was? That's how this book has left me - unable to figure out what I think of it.

The 'heroine', young Coral Glynn, seemed directionless - you know how sometimes you accept an invitation, or agree to do a favor, because of a momentary lapse in your brain during which you can't think...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jul 02, 2012 Judith rated it 3 of 5 stars

You could easily read this book in one sitting, which I did. It starts out like "Rebecca" but veers off in a different direction. Coral is a very young innocent woman who works at a secluded English mansion, nursing an old woman dying of cancer. Coral has no friends or relatives and when her patient dies, the woman's son, Clement, asks her to marry him. She has only to face down a vicious and protective housekeeper who has no intention of leaving the home. Clement is a war veteran who sustained...more

like · see review

Jun 19, 2012 William Reichard rated it 2 of 5 stars

I'm a big fan of Peter Cameron, and I started Coral Glynn with high expectations. Some of my expectations were met, while others were not. The title character is fascinating - somewhat of a cypher, she's an in-home nurse, taking care of the sick and dying, then moving on to her next assignment. The people around her seem to project their own sense of who she is, or who they want her to be, onto her, and for the most part, she allows this. She has an inner life, but Cameron doesn't take the time...more

2 likes · like · see review

May 03, 2012 Doreen rated it 4 of 5 stars

The word "odd" is used over 50 times in this novel, and it is perhaps the word that best describes it; it is full of odd personalities and odd relationships; nonetheless, it is an enjoyable read.

In 1950, a twenty-something private duty nurse, Coral Glynn, takes a job looking after an elderly woman at Hart House, an isolated English manor house. A relationship develops between Coral and Major Clement Hart, her patient's son, but all does not go smoothly.

The book is a novel of manners cum gothic...more The word "odd" is used over 50 times in this novel, and it is perhaps the word that best describes it; it is full of odd personalities and odd relationships; nonetheless, it is an enjoyable read.

In 1950, a twenty-something private duty nurse, Coral Glynn, takes a job looking after an elderly woman at Hart House, an isolated English manor house. A relationship develops between Coral and Major Clement Hart, her patient's son, but all does not go smoothly.

The book is a novel of manners cum gothic tale. It has the remote, gloomy house with a suffocating atmosphere. The master of the house is brooding and damaged. All of the characters seem like lost souls who go from misunderstanding to misunderstanding because of their painful politeness. Rectitude and a lack of confidence prevent people from speaking up to express half-acknowledged emotions or to clarify situations. Hidden motives abound, and the reader is often left wondering about the reasons for a character's behaviour. Some actions are never explained: How was Clement wounded? Why doesn't Clement speak to his dying mother? Why did Coral's predecessors leave their nursing jobs so quickly?

Coral is not a typical heroine; she is timid, weak, lonely, unemotional, sober, and repressed. (Most of the other main characters possess many of these same qualities.) Coral is annoyingly passive; she seems to drift into situations and then panics and flees. She is totally lacking in introspection. At one point she goes to the cinema and a complete stranger puts his hand on her knee: "He kept his eyes focused on the screen, as if the parts of his body were separate, his hand a small country at the outskirts of a large empire that enjoys, simply because of its distance from the capital, the sort of autonomy that is merely a result of negligence." This describes Coral; her behaviour seems totally removed from thought. She is suspected of theft and murder because of her reticence to speak up. At one point, Coral says, "'I just don't know what to think . . . You cannot . . . expect me to know what to think or say. It's all such a muddle.'" She does move from muddle to muddle, another favourite word in the book. Despite being able to identify several of Coral's traits, in the end the reader will still find her to be enigmatic. Sometimes she seems so vague as hardly to exist. She herself needs visual proof that she exists: "She looked back through the cafe window at her table, which had not yet been cleared, and the remnants of her meal remained there as blatant as evidence: she was a person in the world. She existed . . ."

This description might not seem like a recommendation, but the book is oddly appealing. Don't let my befuddled review discourage you; you may, like me, find it worthy of a re-read.

(less)

1 like · like · see review

Apr 06, 2012 Dan rated it 4 of 5 stars

A book not easy to describe and difficult to forget
Hart House – located on a slight rise in the English countryside near a woodland called Sap Green Forest – where Coral Glynn arrives on a wet Thursday in the spring of 1950, is a cold and inhospitable place, remote and almost foreboding. Coral shivers, “The house was so far from anything.”

Coral is a nurse, the third to be called to attend to the old lady, Mrs. Hart, who is dying of cancer. It’s unclear why the two nurses before her had left or b...more A book not easy to describe and difficult to forget
Hart House – located on a slight rise in the English countryside near a woodland called Sap Green Forest – where Coral Glynn arrives on a wet Thursday in the spring of 1950, is a cold and inhospitable place, remote and almost foreboding. Coral shivers, “The house was so far from anything.”

Coral is a nurse, the third to be called to attend to the old lady, Mrs. Hart, who is dying of cancer. It’s unclear why the two nurses before her had left or been driven away.

What is apparent as soon as we meet the Major, the dying woman’s son, and the secretive housekeeper Mrs. Prentice is that author Peter Cameron is drawing a comparison to “Jayne Eyre” – in atmospherics if not so much in storyline. Instead of a raging woman locked behind doors upstairs, we have secrets and deception of another sort closeted away.

On the surface, everything is proper to the point of being flat and contrived. Each character has managed to repress desire and remain as remote and isolated as Hart House. They bury their need and keep their distance from each other by speaking in pleasantries in order to avoid anything close to intimacy.

When Maj. Hart invites her to sit beside him on the sofa “Carol looked at him as if he had asked her to join him in the bathtub. There seemed to be something unbearably intimate about sitting on the same cushion with him.”

Then, like some sort of conjurer, Cameron transforms a walk Coral takes into Sap Green Forest into an encounter with two young children deep in a thicket that becomes something primal and sinister and will come to haunt her in ways you’d never suspect.

The incident deep in Sap Green Forest is one of many seemingly random occurrences involving Coral. Each event when it’s revealed adds another dimension and a deeper understanding to the life she has led before coming to Hart House. Turns out each character has his or her dark past and deep secrets, all part of a surprising and compelling web of intrigue.

What grabbed me most about “Coral Glynn” were the story’s layers. The surface is damp and chilly, all prim and full of rectitude. But one level down, there is the heat of a complex tale that’s very compelling, woven together by honest love and feeling.

It’s one of those novels that is difficult to talk with someone about. Its simple narrative doesn’t convey the depth of its portrayal of the human spirit. Perhaps not easy to describe, “Coral Glynn” is for sure not easy to forget.

(less)

like · see review

Mar 28, 2012 Laura Stone Johnson rated it 2 of 5 stars

Gosh, I so wanted to like this book, having been a huge fan of “Sometimes This Pain . . .”, but I just couldn’t get past the stilted, odd dialogue and the frustrating way the characters related – or unrelated – to each other. In an odd combination of Hemingway-esque dialogue that made me ask, Do people really talk this way?, and Camus-esque disorientation these characters seem to be lost in their lives, and the battle to connect, rather than making me root for them, was just too much for me to b...more

1 like · like · see review

Mar 03, 2012 Larry Hoffer rated it 4 of 5 stars

What a captivating little old-fashioned soap opera of a book!

It's England in 1950. Young Coral Glynn, a nurse, arrives at Hart House, an isolated mansion in the countryside, to care for the terminally ill Mrs. Maud Hart. Other than Mrs. Hart, the house is populated only by the housekeeper, Mrs. Prence, who takes an almost-immediate dislike to Coral, and Mrs. Hart's somewhat-estranged son, Clement, who was injured in World War 2, and spends most of his days brooding over his injuries. Clement se...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 15, 2012 Derrick rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 5-star

"Clement reached across and put his hand on Dolly's cheek, which was damp with tears. He let his gentleness and affection be felt and then removed his hand. 'I'm just going out for a little stroll,' he said.
Dolly laughed quietly, and said, 'Isn't that what God said, before he abandoned us all?'"

Thank you NPR for the book recommendation. It was an one Good Read!
The story follows the life of our main character, Coral, a nurse that has come to Harrington,England in the 1950's to take care of a...more

2 likes · like · see review

May 01, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 4 of 5 stars

I am very fond of gothic elements in my novels and also enjoy books about manners. Coral Glynn: A Novel by Peter Cameron is rife with both. It is dark, brooding and has an eerie sensibility.

The novel begins in 1952 with Coral Glynn, a visiting nurse, arriving at Hart House to care for the aging and dying Mrs. Hart. She has terminal cancer and is not expected to live very long. The house is also inhabited by her son, Major Clement Hart, who was seriously burned and had his legs injured in World W...more I am very fond of gothic elements in my novels and also enjoy books about manners. Coral Glynn: A Novel by Peter Cameron is rife with both. It is dark, brooding and has an eerie sensibility.

The novel begins in 1952 with Coral Glynn, a visiting nurse, arriving at Hart House to care for the aging and dying Mrs. Hart. She has terminal cancer and is not expected to live very long. The house is also inhabited by her son, Major Clement Hart, who was seriously burned and had his legs injured in World War II. Also residing there is a sour-mannered housekeeper and cook named Mrs. Prence. Shortly after Mrs. Hart dies, Clement begins a relationship with Coral and they decide to marry quickly.

On a walk in the woods near Hart House, Coral runs into two children playing a 'game' that is very sadistic. A girl is tied up to a tree with her hands and legs bound. A 10 year-old boy is throwing acorns and pine cones at her. She has abrasions on her face and body. Coral is drawn to the scene by the animalistic cries of the girl. When Coral arrives there, the children state that they are just playing and that she has nothing to be concerned about. Unfortunately, Coral does not report this to the police and this has dire consequences for her.

Clement has a close friend, Robin, a man he has known since childhood, who is in love with him. It is alluded that the two of them had a homosexual affair when they were younger. However, Robin is married to an exuberant woman named Dolly who tries to take Coral under her wing. Coral confides in her and the advice she gets is not helpful to her well-being. There is the air of repressed sexuality between Robin and Clement throughout the book though Clement refuses to discuss the past and Robin wants to bring it up.

The marriage goes as planned but shortly afterwards everything goes awry and, because of the incident in the woods and a past incident in Coral's life, she gets in trouble with the police. Clement and she agree that it is best for her to go to London immediately and correspond with him through Dolly and Robin.

Coral is not a vivacious woman nor does she have the qualities that draw people to her emotionally. She is lonely, frightened and all alone in the world. She is an orphan and her brother was killed in World War II. She is, however, attractive. Basically, she is a lost soul. "Who knew what one wanted and what one didn't want?" Coral devotes most of her life to nursing and appears to have no other interests. Her relationship with Clement is dry and malnourished. There is no passion nor is there any drive.

The book has a very unexpected ending which I loved. It put things more into perspective regarding Coral and showed a part of her personality that was not in evidence during the rest of the book.

I enjoyed the book quite a bit but I had to ask myself at the end, what does this all mean? What is the lesson I am learning and what is the intent of the author? Perhaps the intent of Mr. Cameron is to tell his story and no more. The story speaks for itself and leaves the reader scratching his head but smiling at the same time because of the enjoyment gleaned from the telling.
(less)

1 like · like · see review

Jul 16, 2012 Andrea rated it 3 of 5 stars

I would give this novel a 3 1/2 stars.

The story takes place in England in the 50s. Coral is a nurse and called to care for a dying woman. The woman's son lived there but he was living with war injuries and never went out much. There was also a very mean housekeeper.

After a month, the woman died. Her son was very lonely and ashamed of his burns - but took a chance and asked Coral to marry him.

Coral had been a loner - visting the sick in their homes since nursing school. She had not ties or fami...more

like · see review

Mar 26, 2012 Renee rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a book I picked up based on an NPR review which compared it to gothic novels like Rebecca and Jane Eyre. Having recently read The Haunting of Hill House, another modern version of the gothic novel and enjoyed it, I thought why not continue on this theme.

While there were some similarities with the gothic novel, they were fairly circumstantial---big empty house, mysterious and seemingly hateful housekeeper, etc. In fact, Coral Glynn did not feel at all like a gothic novel to me. It felt mo...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 07, 2012 Losososdiane rated it 5 of 5 stars

This short novel is very hard to describe but I really enjoyed reading it. The writing is very beautiful, minimal, detached but caring. The author takes the tale through unexpected twists and turns. Just when the reader settles in, thinking one event is going to be the main focus, off the tale goes in another direction. I found it full of surprises. The characters are multidimensional in their 1950s way, repressed and yet yearning. There are some very funny passages that had me laughing out loud...more

like · see review

Apr 17, 2012 Graeme Aitken rated it 3 of 5 stars

1950: a young nurse, Coral Glynn, arrives at an isolated mansion in the English countryside to care for the elderly Mrs. Hart, who is dying of cancer. Her son, Major Clement Hart, suffered burns in the war, was left badly scarred and with a limp; yet he hasn’t sought proper treatment. He is homosexual and the state of his body gives him a pretext to avoid intimacy with women. In his youth, he had an affair with his neighbour, Robin Lemming, yet both men have resolved to put it behind them. To th...more

like · see review

Mar 02, 2013 Martin Walsh rated it 4 of 5 stars

This odd and enjoyable novel starts off seemingly as a gothic “English manor house” novel in the mode of Rebecca and becomes something less readily definable. Coral Glynn is an in-residence nurse at Hart House, tending the terminally ill matriarch. Major Hart, the son and heir, sustains debilitating war injuries and has apparently given up on life. A marriage proposal, a purloined ring, and a murder mystery are among the story’s ingredients. Events take unpredictable and surprising turns, and ch...more

like · see review

Feb 19, 2012 Sharon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: pacific-u-mfa

The beginning of my review, in The Nervous Breakdown:
Why would Peter Cameron, a twenty-first century American living in Manhattan, write a period piece set in postwar provincial England? I was intrigued. Coral Glynn, Cameron’s sixth novel, is a departure from his most recent work, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You. That critically acclaimed book is a smart, quirky first-person coming-of-age story about an urban teenager filled with postmodern angst, written with the edgy nerve befitting ou...more

2 likes · like · see review

Apr 06, 2012 Alexis rated it 3 of 5 stars

I found myself editing this book as I read, but only slightly. For example, I wish it had begun with this, which comes on p. 2: "Hart House was several miles outside of Harrington, in Leicestershire. It stood upon a slight rise in the water meadows beside the river Tarle, near the edge of the Sap Green Forest." Between the Tarle and the Sap Green Forest. You know there's a good story there.

As it is, the novel begins adequately, plainly, almost, like Coral Glynn herself. Then, without warning, a...more

like · see review

Jun 21, 2012 Edith rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Hmm...I requested this from the library because of a review I read somewhere, but shortly after I began, I had the feeling that I might be revisiting my experience with "A Reliable Wife"-- and we all remember what a hair pulling, gnashing of teeth experience that was.

However, I stuck with it and did a fast read in an evening and a following morning. 'Gothic Light', I might call it...this book is not deep or seriously literary, but it is entertaining for a few hours. Peter Cameron must have good...more

like · see review

Jul 27, 2012 Whitney rated it 2 of 5 stars

I wanted SO much to love this novel, as it appeared to have many elements I like, yet nothing ends up amounting to much. Big things happen, and end up abandoned. I also feel like we never really know the title character very well at all. The last chapter's reveal seemed too random, especially with all we'd known about Coral's jaded disposition. In the end, I was just left disappointed, and with the feeling that I was missing out on something big (not unlike Major Hart's character).

I suggest goin...more

like · see review

Mar 29, 2012 Alice rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, mystery

Coral Glynn has received wonderful reviews everywhere. And yet... It is a novel about repression, loss, and love. One does care about the characters who suffer from the trauma of WW II and the almost impossibility of being openly gay in 1950s England. And yes it is beautifully written. It does have a melodramatic foreboding setting in the opening chapters and then opens into sunlight at the end. So why the discomfort. The plot raises distracting questions which aren't answered. Things which almo...more

like · see review

Apr 30, 2012 Meg rated it 2 of 5 stars

did you ever see larry david in CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM? well that's funny as larry goes all about doing things you know full well are NOT good ideas and have not been well thought out. strangely this novella reminds me of that show as coral goes all about doing things you know full well are NOT good ideas and aren't going to turn out well. i tried to look deeper and wonder if the author was trying to say that we all are like this(but we aren't) or that women in "those days" had few choices to make...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 14, 2013 Giovanni Faga rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dopo la piacevole scoperta di "Quella sera dorata" (The City of Your Final Destination -2002) e lo stupore per "Un giorno questo dolore ti sarà utile", non ho esitato un istante ad acquistare "Coral Glynn".

LA STORIA, IN BREVE
Siamo nel primo dopoguerra (1950), in un Inghilterra che fatica ancora a emergere dalla foschia delle ceneri che hanno messo in ginocchio più di una generazione. Coral Glynn è una giovane infermiera impiegata a villa Hart, dove assiste la padrona di casa oramai prossima alla...more Dopo la piacevole scoperta di "Quella sera dorata" (The City of Your Final Destination -2002) e lo stupore per "Un giorno questo dolore ti sarà utile", non ho esitato un istante ad acquistare "Coral Glynn".

LA STORIA, IN BREVE
Siamo nel primo dopoguerra (1950), in un Inghilterra che fatica ancora a emergere dalla foschia delle ceneri che hanno messo in ginocchio più di una generazione. Coral Glynn è una giovane infermiera impiegata a villa Hart, dove assiste la padrona di casa oramai prossima alla morte. Il romanzo inizia con l'incontro tra Coral e il maggiore Clement Hart, reduce da una guerra che lo ha segnato nel corpo ma che soprattutto lo ha mortificato nel profondo delle propria umanità. Sullo sfondo, ma non meno importanti alla narrazione, troviamo una bisbetica governante e gli amici di Clement, Robin e sua moglie Dolly.

QUALCHE SPUNTO
Coral Glynn può essere letto attraverso le reazioni generate dall'interazione tra i personaggi. Clement è un uomo ferito, certamente nel corpo, ma più di ogni cosa è smarrito in un mondo che non riconosce, e che fatica a riconoscerlo. La guerra ha restituito a villa Hart un individuo incapace di vivere, chiuso in una gabbia di vetro e insicuro, anche della propria sessualità. Coral Glynn è giovane e attraente, ma non sa cosa farsene della propria bellezza. Anche lei, come il maggiore Hart, sembra non avere una chiave di lettura per gli eventi che le accadono. Sembra quasi che i due personaggi fluttuino in attesa di incontrarsi per puro caso. Ed è proprio l'incontro a generare una fiamma, dal calore ambiguo, che darà lo spunto a Cameron per dipingere personaggi davvero memorabili. Nessuno sembra capace di agire secondo un desiderio, piuttosto si adattano come gas alla forma che li circonda. Immersi in una piovosa campagna inglese, circondati dai prati irrigui e da una foresta - che sarà teatro di un evento tragico -, tutti stanno aggrappati alla vita senza troppa energia, come se fosse più semplice lasciarsi andare alla corrente.
Cameron, ovviamente, inserisce la tematica omosessuale con la solita straordinaria abilità, proiettandola in un passato che alla fine non ci interessa, perché ci appassioniamo a tal punto al presente da rinunciare a sapere cos'è accaduto.

I dialoghi sono scritto con abilità, caratteristica dei romanzi di Cameron, e il ritmo è perfetto. Tutto sembra sospeso in attesa di qualcosa che possa smuovere gli eventi, ma il Deus ex machina non si presenterà nelle forme attese.

Bel romanzo, che conferma l'abilità di Cameron nel restituirci creature viventi che "cercano", che tentano di vivere senza la ridicola e ingenua pretesa di sapere come farlo, di sapere sempre cosa è meglio per noi. (less)

like · see review

May 18, 2012 Lauren rated it 3 of 5 stars

Sigh. I finished this novel a couple of days ago, and my recollections are already blurry.

Synopsis: A visiting nurse moves in with an old lady and her (closeted gay) son. The old lady dies, and the son proposes marriage to the nurse. There are a series of plot twists and revelations that some critics and readers find appealing.

I was surprised the novel received such positive reviews. The writing was competent, but the character development was lame, and the dialogue was super-lame... like it tr...more

like · see review

Mar 27, 2012 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

In this age of oversharing, paparazzi and reality TV, it’s easy to forget that for most of human culture, many things were simply Not Talked About. Unstated and understood. Except “understood” isn’t always understood, even by oneself, or it’s understood differently by different people.

There’s plenty unstated — and much misunderstood — in “Coral Glynn,” a delicate, deliberate story whose quiet surface belies its complex depths.

The novel begins in 1950, when Coral Glynn, a nurse, is hired to care...more In this age of oversharing, paparazzi and reality TV, it’s easy to forget that for most of human culture, many things were simply Not Talked About. Unstated and understood. Except “understood” isn’t always understood, even by oneself, or it’s understood differently by different people.

There’s plenty unstated — and much misunderstood — in “Coral Glynn,” a delicate, deliberate story whose quiet surface belies its complex depths.

The novel begins in 1950, when Coral Glynn, a nurse, is hired to care for an elderly woman in the last throes of illness. The house is bleak, but because of its inhabitants, not its surroundings. The dying woman’s son, Clement, disfigured in the war, has written off the possibility of a wife for himself and doesn’t have much contact with his mother. The housekeeper is surreptitiously hostile toward Coral — but nice to her face.

After what could be called a whirlwind courtship or romance if there had been a courtship or romance, and despite barely knowing each other, Clement and Coral decide to marry.

Lacking friends and family of her own, Coral is helped in her wedding preparations by kindhearted, chattering Dolly, the wife of Clement’s dear friend Robin. But a strange turn of events upends Coral and Clement’s hasty plans and sends the story in an entirely new direction.

Coral herself goes through most of this at a distance, almost removed from the proceedings, swept along for want of any desire to do otherwise. She appears passive, reactive, but she takes charge of her situation when she has to. It’s as if she’s afraid to feel too much: “Coral hoped that by sitting silently and stilly on the bed, she might not disturb the diorama she felt she was in, for she did not want anything else to happen to her ever again. She could not imagine anything that was not bad or disappointing happening.”

Despite her fears, things do happen to her, and they are not all bad or disappointing.

“Coral Glynn” moves in unpredictable ways, which makes it — despite its cool, detached style — an urgent piece of storytelling. The understated tone is reminiscent of Barbara Pym; the oblique non-communication brings to mind Ian McEwan’s “On Chesil Beach,” though the characters don’t suffer such a devastating personal disaster. Coral may not have had “a proper life,” but she manages to find a satisfying one for herself anyway.

(less)

like · see review

Sep 02, 2012 Robert Blumenthal rated it 5 of 5 stars

This wonderful short novel (barely over 200 pages) is a period piece, taking place in England in the 1950s and early 1960s. The lead character, a young woman nurse, comes to care for an older cancer patient in a small English town, and becomes involved in incidents that have a profound effect on her life. She is a much reserved character, almost to the point of being quite frustrating for the reader. The prose is rather stark, almost a combo of Raymond Chandler and David Mamet. I found the chara...more

like · see review

Aug 28, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: british, historical-fiction, world-war-ii

Another one of these dismal British stories. Post-WWII, sad people trying to muddle through. Perhaps it was that dismal, but really! The ending seems tacked on and doesn't seem to follow from the intensity of the main story line. The characters are only marginally compelling. Still and all, I finished it. Not nearly as "beautiful" prose or emotions as was described in the glowing cover comments. Also, the author consistently failed with the transitive verb, "lay." Every time he should have used...more

like · see review

Apr 05, 2012 Evanston Public Library added it

Shelves: fiction

On a damp dreary day in the 1950's, when home nurse Coral Glynn arrives at a remote English mansion to care for its dying matriarch, Mrs. Hart, she meets Mrs. Hart's lonely war-wounded son, Major Hart, who desires her company, and housekeeper Mrs. Pence, who does not. Solitary walks in the nearby forest are a welcomed pastime, until unpleasantness ensues. Soon after, the hope of marriage is complicated by a mysterious murder, a missing ring, misplaced letters, secrets and misunderstandings. We f...more

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 43 44 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (8)

More editions...

Genres

Historical Fiction

7 users

European Literature > British Literature

5 users

Novels

4 users

Romance

3 users

Literary Fiction

3 users

Contemporary

2 users

Adult Fiction

2 users

Mystery

2 users

Glbt > Gay

2 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Peter Cameron

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Peter Cameron (b. 1959) is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Born in Pompton Plains, New Jersey, he moved to New York City after graduating college in 1982. Cameron began publishing stories in the New Yorker one year later. His numerous award-winning storie...more

More about Peter Cameron...

Books by Peter Cameron

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Coral Glynn

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

title link	preview: Coral Glynn
avg rating	preview: Coral Glynn Goodreads rating: 3.29 (541 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12160840-coral-glynn?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1329939488l/12160840.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12160840-coral-glynn?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Coral Glynn by Peter Cameron[/url]

Coral Glynn

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website