The Sending by Geoffrey Household. 1980
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The Sending is a beguiling and strange novel. It overlaps two of my reading passions: the thriller and supernatural fiction. And it is written by one of my favorite writers, Geoffrey Household.
Household's style is spare and perfectly modulated here, as it is in dozens of works. He knows his strengths, and avoids pitfalls which entice and wreck more arrogant craftsmen.
A different hunter/hunted
I first read Rogue Male at a particularly touch time in my life, November 1992. Its authorial sanity and confidence were a tonic, if not a remedy itself.
Since then, I have read every Household paperback I could find. Even when hunting through Half Price Books stores from Leon Trotsky and James P. Cannon, I always checked under H in the fiction and mystery sections. Some times I struck gold: Watcher in the Shadows, A Rough Shoot, Dance of the Dwarves.
Household deals with skilled and resourceful men under extremes of outside pressure in these novels. (Only when rereading Rogue Male did i realize the breadth of knowledge he also offered about interior pressure.)
The inheritor returns
The polecat Meg
All of them witches
The devil explains the role of the Robin
Jay
6 January 2018
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