Three Books by Simon Raven (Alms for Oblivion Series)
Requirements: MOBI / ePUB reader, 511 kb +
Overview: Simon Arthur Noël Raven (28 December 1927 – 12 May 2001) was an English novelist,essayist, dramatist and raconteur who, in a writing career of forty years, caused controversy, amusement and offence. His obituary in The Guardian noted that, "he combined elements of Flashman, Waugh’s Captain Grimes and the Earl of Rochester", and that he reminded Noel Annan, his Cambridge tutor, of the young Guy Burgess.
Among the many things said about him, perhaps the most quoted was that he had "the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel". E W Swanton called Raven’s cricket memoir Shadows on the Grass "the filthiest cricket book ever written". Typically, Raven’s response to this was to ask Swanton’s permission to quote this opinion on the book’s jacket. He has also been called "cynical" and "cold-blooded", his characters"guaranteed to behave badly under pressure; most of them are vile without any pressure at all". His unashamed credo was "a robust eighteenth-century paganism….allied to a deep contempt for the egalitarian code of post-war England."
Genre: Historical Fiction, some MM
Fielding Gray (1967) chronologically 1st in "Alms for Oblivion" series.
Set in 1945, Fielding Gray is groping his way towards manhood. Golden boy of his public school, potential Cambridge scholar, he seems all set for the easy accolades of upper-class society. In his last summer holiday from school, he has his first urgent, fevered sexual encounters with girls. He loses his innocence by degrees — with the teasing Angela Tuck in games of strip poker … with fearful Dixie in a fairground Ghost Train … and, finally, with a coldly efficient prostitute in a little room with a big bed. But 17 year old Fielding is himself a corrupter. His careless debauchment of a younger schoolfellow at his exclusive English boys’ school leads to a sexual tragedy of uncontrollable proportions — and Fielding’s future begins to look much less rosy … Simon Raven in this novel displays to the full his unrivalled talents as a chronicler of corruption in high places.
By the bestselling author of The Judas Boy.
Friends in Low Places (1965) chronologically 5th in "Alms for Oblivion" series.
Set in 1959, Friends in Low Places is actually involved with some low types in high places, society, politics and publishing, and they are certainly not friends. Some of them are however affiliated by their concern in a coming election in which one of the contenders, the editor of the magazine Strix, might be exposed by a homosexual episode in the past. Then there’s the wedding of low born Tom Llewellyn to the daughter of a conservative minister who is not above reproach– he had engaged in an under the table attempt to force the Suez crisis; and finally there’s an incriminating letter to that effect which changes grasping hands several times before Mark Lewson, who poaches off rich, older women, procures it and is killed ….
All the old faces are here again.
The Judas Boy (1968) chronologically 6th in "Alms for Oblivion" series.
Set in 1962, The Judas Boy follows the activities of Fielding Gray 17 years after his encounter with Christopher as a 17 year old schoolboy in 1945.
Fielding Gray, his face and mind scarred by a Cyprus terrorist’s bomb, is sent back to the scene of his disaster to prepare a television feature on the liberated islanders. On the way he twice narrowly escapes violent death. Not even the lustfully inventive Angela Tuck can take his mind off the fact that someone is anxious to eliminate him before he digs too deeply into a squalid and explosive political scandal, but he refuses to be dissuaded – until he meets Nicos, golden-bodied young Greek bearing tempting gifts which Fielding has never been able to refuse …
Download Instructions:
"Fielding Gray":
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http://ceesty.com/wLYud7
"Friends in Low Places":
http://ceesty.com/wLYufe
http://ceesty.com/wLYufo
"The Judas Boy":
http://ceesty.com/wLYufs
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