![]() Unexpectedly serious stuff? Very much so. In Requiem for Idols, young narrator Polly Field-who has made a small fortune as a songwriter-buys back her old family country-house and spends a traumatic weekend there with her first houseguests: ""coloured"" songwriting partner Dahlia, who arrives with a pet monkey (soon killed by Polly's dogs), writhes in misery over racial prejudice (her white lover won't be seen with her in posh company), and decides to settle for a black husband Polly's pretty, married sister Megan, who agonizes over her fading looks and her fear of death, toys with conversion to Catholicism, but finally emerges from her depression to scamper off to an adulterous affair and plain sister Pen, a social-worker who reveals how she came to be such a joyless, scarred stoic. who just might not fully appreciate the brisk, 20th-century, downbeat Norah Lofts here. But both stories will certainly surprise most fans. ![]() ![]() Contrary to the publisher's blurb, one of these two short novels was published under Lofts' own name and has appeared in the US before (Requiem for Idols, Knopf, 1938). ![]()
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