Celebration

Product Description

Celebration chronicles the love story of a widowed American anthropologist and a Scottish geologist as well as the intertwining tales of the couple's eccentric circle of friends, which include a homosexual English aristocrat, a gargantuan African Jesuit, an editor of pornographic literature, and an overzealous CIA agent. Despite the fact that these characters live in the most murderous of centuries and have all reckoned with death in some intimate fashion, they choose to celebrate life over death.

Set in 1969, this joyful novel ends with a wedding, a funeral, and a celebration―all in London, though the celebrants hail from around the globe. Together they view the twentieth century's strangest event―the landing on the moon―a happening which seems to presage an even more displaced future.

From Library Journal

These titles represent Settle's work from the 1950s to the 1980s. The novels cover a wide range of subjects but are mostly concerned with the heroine's "search for love, faith, and a sense of belonging" (LJ 9/1/86).
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Back Cover

One of Mary Lee Settle's richest and most compassionate novels, Celebration chronicles the love affair of a widowed American anthropologist and a Scottish geologist who meet in the British Museum. Set in 1969, the novel also tells the intertwining tales of the couple's diverse cast of friends - a gay English aristocrat and his Hong Kong love, a gargantuan Dinka Jesuit, a sexually subversive editor, a former colonial civil servant, and, as comic relief, an unwitting FBI agent. Despite the fact that these characters live in the most murderous of centuries and that many of them have encountered death in intimate fashion, they all choose to celebrate life. This joyful novel ends with a wedding, a funeral, and a celebration - all in London, though the celebrants travel from countries across the globe. Together they view one of the twentieth century's strangest events - the landing on the moon - a happening which seems to presage an even more displaced future.

About the Author

Mary Lee Settle's major work is The Beulah Quintet, and her Blood Tie was the winner of the National Book Award. Settle has received an Award for Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and awards from the Southern Regional Council, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Merrill Foundation. She is the founder of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The author, most recently, of Choices, Settle's backlist is published with new introductions by the author by the University of South Carolina Press. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.