Interpretations of Love
A profound debut novel that explores complicated love, secrets, and familial misunderstandings from the celebrated octogenarian author of the "trail-blazing" (Oprah Daily) collection Cat Brushing
During the week of Dr. Agnes Stacey's daughter's wedding, each of the eleven attendees in the small family gathering brings their own simmering tensions. Agnes's uncle, Professor Malcolm Miller, has harbored a family secret since Agnes's parents died in a car crash when she was a young girl. Dr. Joseph Bradshaw, who married into the family, has nursed a private obsession with Agnes since his brief stint as her therapist. Agnes herself is returning to her ex-husband's home for the first time, just as she's trying to extricate herself from a potent new love affair. Each one of these three has the tools to analyze the love lives of others, yet find themselves challenged to recognize the love in their own lives. As they all emerge from painful years in emotional isolation, Malcolm considers where better to lay bare the failures and secrets of one's advancing age than at an intimate celebration of love?
In this incisive and lively novel, Campbell parses the inner lives of ordinary people doing their best to process aftershocks of war, the parenting they do and don't receive, and the many different forms love can take in one family.
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Jane Campbell grew up in Southern Africa and studied English Language and Literature at Oxford. She has worked as a Group Analyst, teaching and training and lecturing internationally, for nearly forty years. Her debut collection, Cat Brushing, debuted in her 80th year, and was a New York Times Editor's Choice. She lives in Bermuda and Oxford, England.
Praise for Interpretations of Love
"Each character slowly comes to feel the force of loss, the way the past 'tends to leak into the present all the time, ' and the deep mystery of love and connection. Campbell probes these complicated ideas in clear, shimmering prose, turning the characters' engagement with their psyches into something quite intoxicating . . . A heady and heart-filled debut." --Kirkus Reviews
"Campbell gives visibility to an often invisible generation of women who were shaped by the world wars and the social conventions of the 20th century." --Toronto.com, "20 Best Books for the Sunny (and Shady) Days Ahead"
Praise for Cat Brushing
"It's not every day--or every year--that you encounter a debut as fresh, assured and fun as Jane Campbell's Cat Brushing from a writer of any age... [An] excellent, pathbreaking collection."--New York Times
"A no-holds-barred collection of 13 dirty, doughty and often wickedly funny stories...Jane Campbell's commanding voice -- and wise insights about female empowerment, about embracing one's twilight years and about feeling seen no matter how old you are -- is one damn well worth listening to."--San Francisco Chronicle
"Challenging the stereotypical narrative of older women as weak or feeble, Campbell, an octogenarian herself, gives life to 13 women in stories centering on their passions, libidos and sense of self. Denying that invisibility arrives with wrinkles, these women experience a range of emotion -- joy, heartbreak, trauma, regret and satisfaction -- while living the lives they want on their own terms."--Washington Post
"If you would expect an 80-year-old, first-time author's story collection to be mild and nostalgic, think again. In this trail-blazing, provocative-in-the-best-way volume, Campbell upends expectations."--Oprah Daily
"Strikingly original... These are characters rarely focused on in fiction, variously mischievous, wistful and unabashedly sensual. Campbell, 80, opens a much-needed portal into how it feels to approach life's end."--People Magazine
