Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Bainbridge, Beryl (Vol. 131) - Gary Krist (review date 17 April 1994)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

Gary Krist (review date 17 April 1994)

SOURCE: “Antarctic Antics,” in New York Times Book Review, April 17, 1994, p. 15.

[In the following review, Krist offers favorable assessment of The Birthday Boys.]

“All Englishmen are virtuous,” wrote George Orwell in his novel Burmese Days—“when they are dead.” And certainly death does seem to have a remarkable effect on the moral character, regardless of the corpse's nationality. No sooner is a body cold in the ground than the eulogies begin, obscuring the psychological complexities of the living person beneath a layer of sonorous pieties. This kind of posthumous revisionism is especially pronounced in the case of soldiers, politicians, explorers and others who have fallen in service to God and country in remote latitudes. Whatever these people may have been in life, in death they are transformed.

It is, I feel, partly to debunk such sentimentalized views of the...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Colin Thubron (review date 23 September 1984)
   2. David Punter (essay date 1985)
   3. Suzon Forscey (review date 12 January 1986)
   4. Richard Ingrams (review date 22 August 1987)
   5. Nicci Gerrard (review date 5 January 1990)
   6. Francine Prose (review date July 1991)
   7. Nancy Engbretsen Schaumburger (review date Fall 1991)
   8. Francis Spufford (review date 20 December 1991)
   9. Andro Linklater (review date 4 January 1992)
   10. Michael Cross (review date 11 April 1992)
   11. Elisabeth Wennö (essay date 1993)
   12. Dennis Drabelle (review date 10 April 1994)
   13. Gary Krist (review date 17 April 1994)
   14. Michael D. Schaffer (review date 9 June 1994)
   15. Amy Gamerman (review date 13 July 1994)
   16. Judith Freeman (review date 7 August 1994)
   17. Alex Clark (review date 6 January 1995)
   18. Judy Cooke (review date 13 September 1996)
   19. Jane Gardam (review date 14 September 1996)
   20. John Updike (review date 14 October 1996)
   21. Karen Heller (review date 22 November 1996)
   22. Susan Heeger (review date 24 November 1996)
   23. Kate Saunders (review date 1 May 1998)
   24. Daniel M. Murtaugh (review date 6 November 1998)
   25. Francine Prose (review date 29 November 1998)
   26. John Gallagher (review date 7 December 1998)
   27. Gail Pool (review date January 1999)
   28. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (review date 5 August 1999)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright