内容简介
Adrian Hiller is Monied,cultivated,somewhat neurotic,and used to getting what he wantswhen he wantsit.The local theater is dependent on his money,and at this point on his taste and judgement.His housekeeper,Elsie Mead,has become his lover because he meant to have it that way-even as ,twenty or so years ago,he seduced Alice Fowler,a girl still in college,in a manner somewhat more focefull than seductive.
But the "changes and chances"meantioned in the Book of Common Prayer are indeed man's fate in this earthly existence.The theater group decides that it wants to do popular things rather than the classics,ancient and modern;Adrian makes a dignified speech,and resigns-and takes to his bed.Then Adrian friend,Stephen Youlgrave,a poet in his seventies,asks Elsie to marry him ,and she agrees.And Alice Fowler,whose teenage son works part time for Adrian and whose husband works for the large corporation in which Adrian is a principal shareholder,declines to be seduced again.Change and chance.Psychologically acute without cant or dogma, Stanley Middleton puts before us another episode of a Human Comedy controlled and measured a la Trollope.
But the "changes and chances"meantioned in the Book of Common Prayer are indeed man's fate in this earthly existence.The theater group decides that it wants to do popular things rather than the classics,ancient and modern;Adrian makes a dignified speech,and resigns-and takes to his bed.Then Adrian friend,Stephen Youlgrave,a poet in his seventies,asks Elsie to marry him ,and she agrees.And Alice Fowler,whose teenage son works part time for Adrian and whose husband works for the large corporation in which Adrian is a principal shareholder,declines to be seduced again.Change and chance.Psychologically acute without cant or dogma, Stanley Middleton puts before us another episode of a Human Comedy controlled and measured a la Trollope.