Book Reviews - Review 54Choose a category for a list of reviews. Notes | Books I Couldn't Finish | Random Review Latest | Fiction | Science | Biography / Memoir | History | Music | Miscellaneous | All |
Philip Larkin
Jill
Category: Fiction | Published: 1946 | Review Added: Unknown
A shy Oxford undergraduate is envious of his peers' sexual savoir-faire and retreats into a dream-world, inventing a sister/girlfriend called Jill with whom he has highly ambiguous relationship. In real life, women ridicule him and nothing really gets resolved. As one would expect from Larkin, a profoundly depressing novel (and from one so young! - 21), but precociously accomplished and also precociously portentous of the regretful tone of the poems he would write in middle age.