Résumé :
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In this novel about the confused life of a straight young man in New York sometime in the middle of the twentieth century, Green once again explores the conflict between sex and the Christian concept of sin. Wilfred, 24, lives on his own in a lodging house. Though he comes from a wealthy family, he's a poor relation, forced to work as a salesman in a shop selling menswear. He's a devout Catholic but promiscuously sleeps with women, feeling ashamed but defiant at the same time, full of inner conflict and emotional swings. We first encounter him at the house of his dying uncle who was a rake in his time, and now represents to the young man all that's decayed and degenerate - perhaps, subconsciously, it is an awful warning to himself. The uncle passes onto him a cache of love letters and a photograph of the woman he loved in his youth, and this introduces the transforming, redeeming force of love as a theme in the novel. For Wilfred's loose life is transformed when he meets at the deathbed Phoebe, the wife of a cousin. They fall in love.
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