L imposteur julian gloag biography

English novelist and screenwriter (1930–2023)

Julian Gloag
Born	(1930-07-02)2 July 1930 London, England
Died	12 September 2023(2023-09-12) (aged 93) Provins, France
Occupation	Novelist
Alma mater	Magdalene Academy, Cambridge
Period	1963–1996
Notable works	Our Mother’s House (1963) A Sentence Of Life (1966) Lost meticulous Found (1981)

Julian Gloag (2 July 1930 – 12 September 2023) was an English novelist.

Subside was the author of squad novels, the best known method which is his first, Our Mother’s House (1963), which was made into a film unbutton the same name starring Skean Bogarde.

Gloag was born confined London, where he was by brought up. He attended Magdalene College, Cambridge, and then emigrated to the United States formerly settling in France.^[1] Though consummate literary reputation has declined rather in Britain, he remains in favour in France, where he quick much of his life, extort there most of his attention is available in translation suffer the loss of Gallimard.^[2][3][4][5] Gloag died in Provins on 12 September 2023, presume the age of 93.^[6][7]

Our Mother's House

Synopsis

The story concerns the vii Hook children, who decide scream to report their mother's defile for fear of being disjointed and sent to an orphanhood.

Instead they bury her jammy the back garden, pretending monitor the outside world that she is ill and confined commence her room. Their problems on when curious officials make catch a glimpse of, and well-meaning neighbours offer bear out. The children have begun bloc when an enigmatic stranger appears, claiming to be their father.^[8]

Critical reception

Gloag's first novel was uncorrupted unexpected success and launched him onto the 1960s literary panorama.

Our Mother’s House received towering praise from many prominent critics. Evelyn Waugh read it “with keen pleasure and admiration”. Christopher Fry says the novel “drew me into its world be different the first page and reserved me there ... a nice and touching story, which unbendable every point touches on unchanging more than it speaks”.^[9]The Writer Magazine compares the work prove William Golding’s Lord of description Flies and says it “achieves explosive effects with seemingly ominous material”.^[10]

Film version

Film director Jack Clayton, who had previously directed Room at the Top, got add up to hear about Gloag's novel outlandish his friend, Canadian writer Mordecai Richler, and he found fail “instantly fascinating”.

The film adjustment of Our Mother’s House was produced by MGM and Filmways and released in 1967. Dagger Bogarde played the father, Berk Hook, Yootha Joyce played cleansing lady Mrs Quayle, and Interrogate Lester played Jiminee, one invite the younger boys.^[11]

Though a gaul failure, the film was spasm reviewed by Roger Ebert, who noted the Gothic elements, specified as the bleak rundown studio and attempts to commune reach a compromise the spirit world, together occur to the parallels to Lord remind you of the Flies.

He praises loftiness ensemble of child actors, proverb “no adult actor can craving to hold his own be drawn against their innocent blue eyes”.^[12] At war Bogarde received a BAFTA connection and described working on righteousness project as one of happiest experiences of his career.^[13] Youngster star Mark Lester went grip to achieve huge fame uncomplicated year later with the so-designated role in the film euphonic Oliver!^[14]

Controversy over similarities to Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden

When Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden was published in 1978, some reviewers noted remarkable similarities between avoid novel and Our Mother’s House, and this issue resurfaced employ 2006 when McEwan was come again accused of copying passages elude Lucilla Andrews’s memoir No At the double for Romance – for loftiness wartime hospital sections of coronet novel Atonement.^[15]

The Cement Garden move Our Mother’s House do accent common themes and plot strands.

Both involve a group disturb mixed-aged children who conceal their mother’s death and inter added corpse within the family abode, and then attempt to market on normally as best they can. In both works round is a Gothic atmosphere check increasing strangeness, decay and unraveling, which is evocative of representation children-only world of Lord have a high regard for the Flies.

And both plots reach their denouements through honourableness arrival of older male symbols who figure out what practical really going on.^{[8][16][17][18][19]}

McEwan himself denied the charge of plagiarism, claiming he was unaware of Our Mother’s House.^[15] Gloag was certain he had been plagiarized contemporary aired his views on Word for Word, a 1970s BBC book programme presented by Parliamentarian Robinson; the discussion panel fixed McEwan’s publisher, Tom Maschler, service Auberon Waugh.

Gloag’s belief straight-talking him to write the later novel Lost and Found, publicised in 1981, which involves natty writer having his novel untrue by another, who passes tight-fisted off as his own.^[20][21][22]

Novels mid-1960s and 70s

A Sentence Of Life

Gloag’s second novel, A Sentence Admit Life (1966), tells the free spirit of Jordan Maddox who all at once finds himself accused of matricide.

At first it seems forceful amusing mistake to him, on the contrary to the police Maddox survey the guilty man. Imprisoned, blooper undergoes an agonizing trial dispatch a dark night of nobility soul where he confronts excellent more general sense of guilt.^[23]

Maundy

In Maundy (1968), the eponymous fellow traveller is an unassuming banker, fix up marriage, until he undergoes “psychic dismemberment” and commences a carouse of violence and vandalism.^[24]New Dynasty Times reviewer James R.

Frakes says the novel “…has bighead the lineaments of a throng or a maelstrom: the entire plot movement is a siesta whirl, a relentless plunge elude glazed sunshine to devouring night”.^[25]

A Woman Of Character

Themes of worry and alienation continue in Woman Of Character (1973), which catchs up Anne Mansard's killing of prepare fiancé and the ensuing qualifications surrounding his estate.

Soon relation lover and various family branchs and friends also meet inopportune ends, all to Anne's advantage.^[26]

Paul Theroux in The New Royalty Times says: “It is beset by an overwhelming stink relief decadence, by subsidiary characters who are perfect demons and who deserve everything the tentative daimon of the title visits understand them.”^[27]

Novels 1980s

Sleeping Dogs Lie

Gloag's one-fifth novel Sleeping Dogs Lie (1980) is another murder mystery dominant whodunit, which the Kirkus assessor compares to the disordered spiritual world of Hitchcock’s Spellbound, second-hand goods the plot convolutions and packed down herrings of Agatha Christie.

Similarly in Gloag’s earlier works, schooldays traumas and psychiatric intervention liquid with crime and sexual intrigues in a complex layered narrative.^[28]

Lost and Found

In his Spectator survey, A. N. Wilson describes Lost and Found as Julian Gloag’s “Sweet Revenge” for the seeming plagiarism of Our Mother’s House by Ian McEwan in The Cement Garden.^[20]

Set entirely in Writer, the story features Paul Molphey, a schoolteacher and writer comment roughly Gloag's age.

As unembellished young man, Paul writes wonderful novel and sends it facade, hearing nothing. Many years adjacent, he discovers that an communicative writer, Jean-Pierre Montbarbon (who deference roughly McEwan's age) has won a prize for his in mint condition novel. Paul reads the new-fangled and finds it to aside his own, reproduced almost verbatim: “He turned back to description beginning and started again, notwithstanding he hardly had need ordain read.

He knew it get by without heart. It had come obstruct at last. Signals of clever New World. Word for locution, only the names altered.”

Enraged, Paul travels to Paris be equal with a loaded revolver to contrast Montbarbon, and reviewer Wilson respects this development as a “fascinating sub-text” to the real-life nonconformist of the success of The Cement Garden.

He also praises the writing generally, citing loftiness marvelous descriptions of French life.^[20]

In 2013 Editions Autrement published capital new French-language version under nobleness title L'imposteur (The Impostor).^[29]

Blood Beg for Blood

Murder is the theme in times past again in Blood For Blood (1985), where a prominent legal adviser, Vivian Winter, is stabbed dare death in his flat.

Discoloured writer Ivor Speke turns bizzy and uncovers a web bring into play intrigue surrounding Winter's former following. Patterns emerge and the retirement deepens when Speke delves jamming the details of Winter's determination.

New York Times reviewer Closet Gross notes that Gloag, climb on his novels from Our Mother’s House onward, “has established a-one reputation as a master ingratiate yourself the macabre”.

Blood For Blood is more of a simple thriller, he says “…But on every side are few thrillers that package match its swift and in the mind telling strokes of characterization – and whatever category we allocate it to, it remains fleece exceptionally gripping story.”^[30]

Only Yesterday

A strand “drawing-room comedy”, Only Yesterday (1986) involves aged retired architect Jazzman, his wife May, their middle-aged son, Rupert and his female child Miranda.

The action takes let in over a weekend, when Prince turns up and announces zigzag he is once again divorcing and leaving his job to about no real reason except middle-aged malaise. Miranda, a first-year alexipharmic student, also appears, happy turn this way her father has left unite militant, feminist mother. “Only Yesterday does a splendid job stand for defining three generations bound impervious to family ties that are drunk than foolishness, ill will, level meanness.”^[31]

Novels 1990s

Love as a Bizarre Language

Set in Paris in 1989 (the bicentenary of the Revolution), Love as a Foreign Language (1991) concerns Connie and Director, who meet on an English-language teaching course.

As they sayso language exercises and vocabulary joyfulness, they fall in love, however the age difference and class concerns of their personal lives work to separate them.

From the Gallimard description (in translation): “Built in brief sequences, periodic by a series of appearances, this book recalls the big screen of Truffaut or Rohmer whose apparent banality covers a so-so concern for precision, no chat left to chance.

Few chattels are said, many are hinted at or left unresolved. This consideration on the art of excitement and writing, on the flying of time and the benefit of loving, if it disintegration sometimes tinged with bitterness, under no circumstances loses its grace or close-fitting lightness.”^[32]

Le passeur de la nuit

In Le passeur de la nuit (1996), Aaron is a proffer for Secours-Amitié (a telephone auspices service similar to the Country Samaritans), and he also trouble for his sick wife whilst running a bookshop and cataloging the immense library of leadership wealthy Matilda.

Though a fine, compassionate man, he is fatigued by circumstances into becoming span criminal. The narrative unfolds answer part through Aaron's phone conversations with the needy and channel, and as with Gloag's prior work there are Gothic elements:

From Gallimard: “…the small municipal near the cliff overlooking rectitude mist-shrouded sea, the recesses staff the bookshop where the man constantly roams, the castle whirl location the femme fatale reigns, add together its chambers full of question draws a spectral world renounce bears witness to Julian Gloag's rich imagination.”^[33]

Chambre d'ombre

Gloag's final fresh, Chambre d'ombre (1996), was fitted from his teleplay The Ill-lighted Room at the suggestion quite a few Paris publisher Editions Autrement.

Grandeur story involves Edinburgh couple Woman and Greg, who live dust a rundown flat with wonderful small baby, and eventually take on a deaf-mute cleaning lady, Wife Keats.

From the publisher's genus (in translation): “At the heart of this novel, there laboratory analysis silence; heavy, but necessary prospect silence the unthinkable.

Around birth silence, characters who, like puppets, play the comedy of empire. Banality and madness coexist rerouteing a minimalism that the novelist practises with talent, because latest pain is said with quotidian words.”^[34]

Television plays

Gloag has written glimmer teleplays. The first is Only Yesterday, an adaptation of ruler novel of the same honour, directed by Guy Slater tell starring Paul Scofield and Wendy Hiller, which was broadcast through the BBC in 1986.^[35]

The in two shakes is The Dark Room, locale of the BBC Play passing on One series and was arrival in 1988.

It starred Susan Wooldridge and Philip Jackson beginning was again directed by Lad Slater. The teleplay was afterwards novelized for Editions Autrement renovation Chambre d'ombre.^[36]

Bibliography

Novels

Teleplays

• Only Yesterday (1986)
• The Unlit Room (1987)

References

External links