The Return of Philip Latinowicz - post II

Didn't get the chance tp catch up on the lunchtime read but here is more Krleza.

There is something that reminds you a bit of Proust here with the main characters in both Remembrance of Things Past and this book being artists and quite prepared to attend social functions and find the people at them disagreeable and not the sort they want to hang around with.

Philip’s problem comes from the relationships his mother has formed with an ageing ex official and those in his circle.

Bullet points between pages 80 – 150

* Philip’s mother has become involved with an old official who lives in a chateaux and wants to try and get her son on side but there is resistance by Philip and when he does finally visit him he is rude and leaves the house in mid conversation

* But the positive is that he is rediscovering his interest in art and paints a deaf mute that grabs his attention and is relieved to start to think in pictures again

* You sense there is the start of a potential relationship with a woman who is renowned for destroying men and marriages in the past and Philip has a very limited experience of women and that could be his undoing

* In a series of chapters the story of how the woman entranced and then destroyed a family man is told from his perspective and hers in a very clever way that leaves them both blameless in a sense because it was infatuation

* Philip attends a get together where the woman is also in attendance and wanders off into the woods and suddenly she appears and they sit silently together as if it is meant to be

More tomorrow…