Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
Matthias is a man of orderly ways, a librarian whose life rarely strays from its narrow channels. At the library where he works is an archive of letters from the poet T. S. Eliot to an American woman, written during the years Eliot was undertaking Four Quartets and wrestling with problems of marriage and of faith.
Matthias's marriage to Judith in the years following World War II forms the core of this novel. Despite their differences - Judith is unruly, an artist - their shared love of poetry and jazz at first lends strength to their bond. But their good intentions cannot bridge their essential divergences. A growing alienation is complicated by Judith's increasingly erratic behavior, which culminates in a severe breakdown and her incarceration in a mental hospital.
Judith's own voice, in the form of a journal she kept in the hospital, is the transfixing middle passage of this novel. The journal opens onto the psyche of a woman haunted by questions about love's worth in a world filled with war's evils. As Matthias wrestles with his own reawakened longings, and his memories, he is forced to reconsider his role in his wife's death. After years of carefully tended caution, he realizes that he must acknowledge emotion as much as logic.
This time, the result is an act of rebellion intended as reparation - and a provocative disruption of our own ideas about debts to the dead.
Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
Previews available in: English
Showing 8 featured editions. View all 8 editions?
Edition | Availability |
---|---|
1
The Archivist
2008, Little, Brown and Company
Electronic resource
in English
0316049492 9780316049498
|
zzzz
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
2 |
zzzz
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
3 |
zzzz
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
4 |
zzzz
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
5 |
aaaa
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
6 |
eeee
|
7 |
eeee
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
8 |
zzzz
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
Book Details
Edition Notes
Classifications
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Work Description
A young woman's impassioned pursuit of a sealed cache of T. S. Eliot's letters lies at the heart of this emotionally charged novel -- a story of marriage and madness, of faith and desire, of jazz-age New York and Europe in the shadow of the Holocaust. The Archivist was a word-of-mouth bestseller and one of the most jubilantly acclaimed first novels of recent years.
Excerpts
Community Reviews (0)
Feedback?History
- Created April 1, 2008
- 8 revisions
Wikipedia citation
×CloseCopy and paste this code into your Wikipedia page. Need help?
July 13, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
October 5, 2021 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
November 26, 2020 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
July 30, 2010 | Edited by IdentifierBot | added LibraryThing ID |
April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from Scriblio MARC record |