2002, ISBN: 9780899199870

Hardcover

New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1992. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Scott Hunt (Jacket illustration). Format is approximately 6 inches by 8.5 inches. [8], 264 pag… More...

New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1992. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Scott Hunt (Jacket illustration). Format is approximately 6 inches by 8.5 inches. [8], 264 pages. Signed by the author on the title page. Robert Roper has won awards for his fiction and nonfiction alike. His Fatal Mountaineer, a biography of the American climber/philosopher, Willi Unsoeld, won the 2002 Boardman-Tasker Prize given by London's Royal Geographical Society. His works of fiction include The Trespassers, Royo County, On Spider Creek, Mexico Days and Cuervo Tales; which was a New York Times Notable Book. His journalism appears in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Outside, Men's Journal, National Geographic, and others. He teaches writing and film at Johns Hopkins. In this modern-day Lady Chatterley's Lover, Robert Roper examines the nature of modern love--a subject as fresh and provocative today as when D. H. Lawrence startled and captivated audiences over half a century ago. In its exploration of the boundary between the privileged life and the laws of the heart, The Trespassers offers an intriguing look at contemporary society, and creates a powerful vision of erotic love. Catherine Mansure must decide whether to sacrifice her life of leisure on a large estate in California and perhaps even the love of her son for her powerful, passionate love of a musician who makes his living growing marijuana. With its lush, masterly prose, The Trespassers is a powerful novel as unsettling as it is deeply moving. Robert Roper's talent, hailed in the reviews of his earlier books, is evident here in this brilliant retelling of one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century literature. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: Set in California's Santa Cruz Mountains, this tale of adultery in the woods recalls Lady Chatterley's Lover with a lush, realistic, sensitive exploration of sexual love--and a faithful imitation of D. H. Lawrence in his mythifying mode. Catherine Mansure is stagnating in her marriage to former Berkeley radical Rick, now a self-controlled, pompous scion who tends his wealthy family's wooded estate and corporate affairs. While Rick sinks into semi-invalidism, Catherine makes love on the forest floor with Henry Bascomb, a reticent woodsman and bluegrass fiddler who grows a marijuana crop on Mansure land. In the manner of Lady Chatterley, Bascomb is the elemental intruder who ravages a sexually dormant upper-class woman whose very body parts brim with primordial, goddess-like powers. Catherine, who neglects her Nintendo-playing son Ben, ignores the cautionary advice of her friend Maryanne, a tough divorce lawyer, and of her own sister Muriel. Rick, who's having an affair of his own, condemns his wife as a self-absorbed seeker of true feelings, a characterization that Catherine nearly earns. Roper makes the most of the Lawrentian echoes and parallels., Ticknor & Fields, 1992, 3<