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A psychodrama about obsessive love, from one of Australia’s finest novelists.
Is it mad to love in spite of the evidence...or just necessary?
'There is ambiguity in most human relationships. Like a sequence of words, a relationship can be open to different interpretations. And when two people have differing views, not merely of the state of their relationship, but of its very nature, it can affect the entire course of their lives.'
Following years of unrequited love, an out-of-work school teacher decides to take matters into his own hands, triggering a chain of events that neither he nor his psychiatrist could have anticipated.
At once a psychological thriller and a social critique, SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY is a story of obsessive love in an age of obsessive materialism. It's a story of impulse and paralysis, of empty marriages, lovers and a small boy, gambling and the market, of adult children and their parents, of poetry and prostitution, psychiatry and the law. Brimming with emotional, intellectual and moral dilemmas, the page-turning story - reminiscent of the richest fiction of the nineteenth century in its labyrinthine complexity - unfolds at a rapid-fire pace to reveal the full extent to which these people have been affected by each other and by the insecure and uncertain times in which they live.
About the Author
Elliot Perlman is the author of the award-winning novel THREE DOLLARS (Victoria’s favourite book, as voted by Victorians, and which was also a feature film starring David Wenham and Sarah Wynter), THE REASONS I WON’T BE COMING (a collection of award-winning stories), and the novel SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY. He is published in 20 countries, to glowing reviews. All of his books have won awards here and overseas, and all three of his books have been bestsellers in Australia and internationally. He is hailed as the ‘Zola of Australia’ in France. He lives in Melbourne.
In The Press
‘Compulsively readable.’ -- THE NEW YORKER
‘Bustling, kaleidoscopic... There are traces of Dickens’s range in Perlman and of George Eliot’s humanist spirit... This is an exciting gamble of a novel, one willing to lose its shirt in its bid to hold you... Stay with it for the long haul. It’s worth it.’ -- THE NEW YORK TIMES (A NY Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and Notable Book of the Year)
‘An exemplary novel in the tradition of Thomas Hardy and the earlier D H Lawrence. Perlman’s power is in conveying the strife between personality and character in each of his protagonists. His prose, like his story itself, is vivid, humane, and finally optimistic in a manner that strengthens the reader’s perceptiveness.’ -- HAROLD BLOOM
‘Captures the zeitgeist of contemporary Australia every bit as powerfully as The Corrections anatomised that of America.’ -- SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (UK)
‘A colossal achievement, a complicated, driven marathon of a book... The opening section is a tour de force... At the end, in a comprehensive, and almost Shakespearean way, Perlman picks up every loose thread and knots it.’ -- THE OBSERVER (UK)
