The cutting edge

by Penelope Gilliatt

Professor Corbett did no believe in haste and called his first son Brother A and the second Brother B while he searched for suitable names. By the time the boys were finally christened Peregrine and Benedick, they were as inseparable as twins. Their devotion survived the names, survived growing up, and even survived separation. But can it survive the love of the same woman - or is loving one the same as loving the other? In the world of Penelope Gilliatt's fiction, we must expect the unexpected - and nowhere more than in the witty resolution of this, her richest and most eloquent novel to date.

149 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1979

About the author

Brilliant English short story writer, novelist, critic and screenwriter, Penelope Gilliatt came to represent some of the best of the second generation writing at the New Yorker magazine.

Reviews

[Lucy Andrews-Cummin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to admit first thing that when I read this class of contemporary(ish) English novel I often have to fight off a sense of intellectual inadequacy. It's not an easy to matter to write convincingly about people who are brilliant but Gilliatt succeeds. And she does more than that. The novel is an exercise in crisp economy, in not one wasted word or detail. I didn't want to like either the novel or to care one bit about the two brothers, Benedick, musician and composer, and Peregrine Corbett, a well-known conservative literary/political writer of a type we don't have any more in the U.S.A. but who might be epitomized by the late William F. Buckley. The one quibble for me is that the woman, Joanna, whom they both love never really came to life as did the brothers and there is, as often happens, that slightly kinky British thing (I'm thinking of Mary Wesley, Iris Murdoch and so on) of complicated love tangles that Americans just can't pull off or tolerate. It's short and intense and smart, and to do it justice I expect I should read it again aloud and slowly, although that is not likely to happen, I admit. I would listen to it though if I came across it.
****