Forrest Reid

Suggest and discuss books to read (all languages welcome!)
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ChuckW
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Post by ChuckW »

So I just launched a solo recording of Forrest Reid's The Garden God and was shocked to find out we haven't recorded ANY of his books! That's actually a little surprising, considering the resurgent interest in his work in academic circles.

So considering this a recommendation for anyone and everyone to check out some of Forrest Reid's stuff. In particular, I'd recommend these (which have all been reissued recently by Valancourt Books):

FOLLOWING DARKNESS
When Following Darkness first appeared in 1912, critics did not know what to make of it. Sentimental novels of childhood and adolescence were popular in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, but here was something completely new in English fiction: a book that explored a teenager’s thoughts and emotions with unflinching honesty. One leading critic denounced the novel’s protagonist Peter Waring as a ‘subject for the pathologist rather than the novelist’, an ‘evil’ character who ‘unutterably disgusts’, and the book’s allusions to Peter’s sexual awakening and his rejection of Christ disturbed contemporary readers.

Following Darkness is the story of sixteen-year-old Peter’s conflict with his staunchly religious father, whose religion and values Peter rejects with contempt, his burgeoning friendship with Owen Gill, and his growing passion for Katherine Dale. With keen psychological insight, Reid creates in Peter a complex and fascinating character: morally ambiguous, deeply flawed, snobbish, conceited and selfish, yet ultimately sympathetic. Acclaimed as a masterpiece by E.M. Forster and a possible influence on Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Following Darkness was unlike any novel that had preceded it, and it remains one of Forrest Reid’s most interesting works.
THE SPRING SONG
Thirteen-year-old Grif Weston and his siblings, Barbara, Ann, Jim, Edward, and Edward's friend Palmer Dorset, travel to their grandfather's home in rural Ireland, where they hope to pass an eventful summer. Unexpected dangers and adventures lurk, as the children must solve the kidnapping of their beloved dog Pouncer and thwart a burglary attempt on Grandpapa's house. Yet there is another danger, far more sinister, involving Billy Tremaine, a local boy who died at age fourteen in a tragedy no one wants to talk about.

When Grif hears a mysterious figure singing an old tune called "The Spring Song," old Mr. Bradley tells him that it's Billy's ghost, trying to lure Grif into joining him in the world of the dead; shortly afterwards Grif falls ill with an inexplicable sickness. But Palmer Dorset, an avid reader of Sherlock Holmes tales, is determined to solve these mysteries, and he'll risk every danger to find the truth behind Mr. Bradley's ghastly stories and Grif's unexplainable illness. . . .

Forrest Reid (1875-1947) is unequaled among English-language writers in his novels of boyhood and adolescence. In The Spring Song (1916), he weaves a classic boys' adventure tale with a chilling ghost story in the vein of Henry James’sThe Turn of the Screw.
PENDER AMONG THE RESIDENTS
Wounded during the First World War, Rex Pender returns home to discover that he has inherited his grandfather’s mansion in the small Irish town of Ballycastle. As he seeks to recover his health, his peace is often interrupted by the local residents: the well-meaning but officious Dr. Olphert, the fourteen-year-old poet-prodigy Trefusis Heron, and Pender’s older cousin, Nellie Burton, who means to marry her daughter Norah to him. But Pender soon discovers himself to be among another group of residents as well: the ghosts of the dead haunt an old chamber, long disused, where a century earlier a tragedy played out, involving his great-grandfather Edward, his young wife, Roxana, and her lover. As Pender passes the period of his convalescence in piecing together the family history from dusty portraits and long-concealed letters, the haunted chamber begins to exercise its influence upon him, and the barrier that divides past from present and the living from the dead, begins to break down, leading to an eerie and unsettling climax . . .

Though best known for his tales of boyhood, Forrest Reid (1875-1947) was also a master of the supernatural tale in the tradition of Sheridan Le Fanu and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. Pender among the Residents (1922) is a highly entertaining story, told in the distinguished prose style for which Reid is celebrated, and featuring a delightfully ominous and dreadful sense of atmosphere that makes it perfect reading for a dark, chilly night.
MORE INFO ABOUT REID: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Reid
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DACSoft
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Post by DACSoft »

ChuckW wrote: July 4th, 2018, 1:45 pm So I just launched a solo recording of Forrest Reid's The Garden God and was shocked to find out we haven't recorded ANY of his books! That's actually a little surprising, considering the resurgent interest in his work in academic circles.

So considering this a recommendation for anyone and everyone to check out some of Forrest Reid's stuff.
Thanks for the recommendations. I noticed, also, that PG doesn't have any of Reid's books. I was interested enough in your summaries that I obtained PG copyright clearances for:

The Garden God
The Spring Song
Following Darkness

In addition, I got a PG clearance for another book you mentioned in another thread, Loring's Two College Friends.

I plan to run the ebook projects through DP (or as solo submissions) for PG. The Garden God won't help you, but maybe the other ones will make it to a PG version before you or others want to record them. :)

Thanks again,
Don
Don (DACSoft)
Bringing the Baseball Joe series to audio!

In Progress:
The Arrival of Jimpson; Baseball Joe in the World Series
Next up:
Two College Friends; Baseball Joe Around the World
ChuckW
Posts: 3984
Joined: January 22nd, 2012, 7:47 am
Location: Ohio

Post by ChuckW »

DACSoft wrote: July 30th, 2018, 3:32 pm
ChuckW wrote: July 4th, 2018, 1:45 pm So I just launched a solo recording of Forrest Reid's The Garden God and was shocked to find out we haven't recorded ANY of his books! That's actually a little surprising, considering the resurgent interest in his work in academic circles.

So considering this a recommendation for anyone and everyone to check out some of Forrest Reid's stuff.
Thanks for the recommendations. I noticed, also, that PG doesn't have any of Reid's books. I was interested enough in your summaries that I obtained PG copyright clearances for:

The Garden God
The Spring Song
Following Darkness

In addition, I got a PG clearance for another book you mentioned in another thread, Loring's Two College Friends.

I plan to run the ebook projects through DP (or as solo submissions) for PG. The Garden God won't help you, but maybe the other ones will make it to a PG version before you or others want to record them. :)

Thanks again,
Don
Thanks! Here's hoping we can encourage someone out there to record some of these. :-)
PROJECTS
Current Solo:Septimius Felton (Hawthorne's final novel)
Help Needed: Strange Interlude (O'Neill's Freudian melodrama - roles available!)
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