Mockery Gap

T. F. Powys

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780571279050
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Mockery Gap is the story of a tiny village on the coast of England, and a series of events arising out of the complex currents set flowing in this simple community by the chance remarks of a chance visitor. This is Mr James Tarr, a gentleman of ethnological pursuits with a desire to impress himself firmly upon people. He exercises this passion on the inhabitants of Mockery Gap, and the effect of carefully-weighted suggestion upon minds given to credulity and superstition makes for far-reaching and devastating consequences.
"By all conventional standards, T F Powys is the least modern of writers. His novels and short stories are set in a landscape as far removed as possible from anything smart or urban - a fantastical version of English village life, in which human emotions work themselves out against a backdrop of brooding countryside... Writing as an allegorist or fabulist rather than any sort of conventional realist, Theodore Powys looks not to the present or the future, but to the past. He sets his tales in a grotesquely exaggerated rural landscape, not because he has any nostalgia for the way of life it may once have contained, but because, by doing so, he is free to strip human beings down to their barest elements - their lust, greed, cruelty and stupidity, and the mixture of dread and yearning with which they respond to the prospect of death." John Gray, New Statesman

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Chapter 1 : THE SEA
• Chapter 2 : THE BLIND COW
• Chapter 3 : THE NELLIE-BIRD
• Chapter 4 : A WARNING
• Chapter 5 : ‘DON’T STRAY’
• Chapter 6 : GOD SIMON
• Chapter 7 : A TRUE NELLIE
• Chapter 8 : ‘ONE OF THEY PRINGS’
• Chapter 9 : LED BY THE FLOWERS
• Chapter 10 : MRS. PATTIMORE IS LATE FOR DINNER
• Chapter 11 : AN UGLY THING
• Chapter 12 : GODFATHER PATTIMORE
• Chapter 13 : MISS PINK FEARS THAT SOME­THING IS COMING
• Chapter 14 : MR. PRING TALKS TO THE STONES
• Chapter 15 : THE FISHERMAN WILL NOT BE ROUSED
• Chapter 16 : THE WHITE MICE
• Chapter 17 : A BROWN RIBBON
• Chapter 18 : SOMETHING HAPPENS
• Chapter 19 : THE END OF MR. DOBBIN
• Chapter 20 : MR. PATTIMORE SEES A VISION
• Chapter 21 : FISH TO PLEASE A NELLIE
• Chapter 22 : MR. CADDY SETS A SNARE
• Chapter 23 : MR. PATTIMORE FINDS HIS KITE
• Chapter 24 : MOCKERY WOOD
• Chapter 25 : THE LOVE MESSAGE
• Chapter 26 : SILENT BELLS
• Chapter 27 : MRS. TOPPLE GOES TO HEAVEN
• Chapter 28 : STRANGE FISH
• Chapter 29 : THE OTHER MARY
• Chapter 30 : MR. RODDY SETS OUT FOR A SAIL
• Chapter 31 : A BED OF WITHIES
• Chapter 32 : MR. RODDY LOSES HIS LETTERS
• Chapter 33 : SUNDAY TROUSERS
• Chapter 34 : THE SIREN
• About the Author
• Copyright