Seven Types of Ambiguity is a psychological thriller and a literary adventure of breath taking scope. Celebrated as a novelist in the tradition of Jonathan Franzen and Philip Roth, Elliot Perlman writes of impulse and paralysis, empty marriages, lovers, gambling, and the stock market; of adult children and their parents; of poetry and prostitution, psychiatry and the law. Comic, poetic, and full of satiric insight, Seven Types of Ambiguity is, above all, a deeply romantic novel that speaks with unforgettable force about the redemptive power of love.
The story is told in seven parts, by six different narrators, whose lives are entangled in unexpected ways. Following years of unrequited love, an out-of-work schoolteacher decides to take matters into his own hands, triggering a chain of events that neither he nor his psychiatrist could have anticipated. Brimming with emotional, intellectual, and moral dilemmas, this novel-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 one another and by the insecure and uncertain times in which they live. Our times, now.
Seven Types of Ambiguity
( dir. Glendyn Ivin
et. al. )agent
Australia
:
Matchbox Pictures
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
,
2017
10408355
2017
series - publisher
film/TV
thriller
'Seven-year-old Sam Marin is taken from his school. Much to the relief of his parents Anna and Joe, Sam is found unharmed hours later and the police arrest ex-school teacher, Simon Heywood. It’s not a matter of who took Sam, but a question of why.
'Told from the shifting perspectives of seven characters, this psychological mystery explores the complex emotional terrain of past and present relationships and the risks people will go to in the name of love.'
Source: ABC TV (http://about.abc.net.au/abc-in-2017/drama-lovers/). (Sighted: 04/11/2016)
Epigraph:
God has pity on kindergarten children.
He has less pity on school children.
And on grownups he has no pity at all,
he leaves them alone,
and sometimes they must crawl on all fours... (Yehuda Amichai)
'The novels of Elliot Perlman encompass a wide variety of social observations and criticism in both contemporary and historical settings. Each novel, Three Dollars, Types of Ambiguity, and The Street Sweeper, most definitely constitutes a recognition of suffering and a cry against inhumanity. However, the principal purpose of these novels is not to wallow in awfulness, nor is it solely to educate readers as to the harder realities of life. Here, Duthie examines Perlman's three novels. ' (Publication summary)
