Christopher Homm by C.H. Sisson6/21/2023 ![]() ![]() When the steam blew out in clouds he left his statuesque position like one who is entering life with reluctance. ![]() True, Sisson's stately narration of this small-scale vale of tears, full of sad minutiae, provides a gloss of dry comedy: ""At all times he stood there an unfinished man, something that the sculptor had not the heart to chip any more. ![]() Christopher is a runty toddler, later a picked-on schoolboy in adulthood, he's a frustrated soapbox orator, the father of a daughter, a stock-clerk in a shoe factory, a hen-pecked husband and when he does have a brief spell as a free man (leaving wife Felicia), he's miserable and lonely. ![]() He was about to set out on the road to Torrington Street, and if he'd known how bitter the journey was to be he would not have come."" This life-history is indeed a bitter journey, a stern demonstration of man-as-sinner-a theme that won't surprise readers of Sisson's High Anglican poetry and his uncompromisingly Tory criticism: Christopher Homm (as in homme/man) is surely an Everyman-blindly going through the inexorable motions of predestination. This is the first US publication for English poet Sisson's 1955 novel-which is narrated backwards, beginning with Christopher Homm's death at 70 (""seventy years of imperfect morality"") and ending with his birth: ""Christopher crouched in his blindness. ![]()
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