Mrs. Parkington – Louis Bromfield – HarperCollins – 1943 – Tela

**Mrs. Parkington**: Susie Parkington, an elderly lady who is not afraid of anything (we're up to World War II), belongs to a generation of builders who had no easy life, but always managed to cope with adversity: living New York, but remember that we have made a fortune in the west - landmines - and we have not forgotten that the conquest of wealth was not always a pleasure.

One chapter to another, past and present are passing the ball ... and a way to bring down each other - because Bromfield, we can trust him, denied the facilities that adhere to the evocation of the "good old days." Susie brings to life the figure of the man she loved and that does more: Gus Parkington, the brilliant founder of a dynasty that did not steal the money, a tough guy, an adventurer at heart - but also brutal, selfish ...

and cavaleur. The figure also missing other than death, was gunned down mercilessly. And provide: shared hope (the clarity is not a cure-all) and dismay - the latter largely prevailing feeling another. All around, in fact, a gallery of characters occupied "look" may not (this is the case that) all of the decomposition are: alcoholism, boredom, suicide or taste of power (which finally returns same), the rampant dishonesty ...

A great sadness down its dark color in the tapestry as long as the author proceeds to us and already fraying. The emotion is still hiding there (several characters who touch us with the pathos of his fall) and the temptation of Hope (youth, for whom the old woman's tenderness, she will direct the ruins?) .. . Bromfield, but not a man to pay and pay illusions.

Composed during the war (1943), Mrs. Parkington opens with a bang - and a rather harsh light - the cycle of the last great American novels of Bromfield.