The Dear Deceit

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The third in Brooke-Rose’s sequence of early realist novels, The Dear Deceit, first published in 1960, chronicles in reverse the misadventures of Alfred Northbrook Hayley, a scheming opportunist whose canards and manipulations are met with fatigue and irritation among his family, and whose romantic, financial, and religious struggles form in part a striking autobiographical portrait of Brooke-Rose’s own father, Alfred Rose. By moving in reverse order from adulthood to childhood, the novel is structured as a form of genealogical investigation, subverting the conventional bildungsroman by presenting a sequence of sometimes disconnected episodes rather than a coherent lifestory. This first paperback edition contains an illuminating introduction by Joseph Andrew Darlington, who traces via archival material the parallels with Brooke-Rose’s own family history, and her careful splicing of fiction and fact. The Dear Deceit is perhaps her most sombre work, if still sharp with satirical observation and witty, cutting dialogue.