Providings

Since Providings, her first novel, was first published in 1965, Elspeth Davie has gained recognition as one of the most original and individual of current British writers, winner of many major literary prizes, whose starting point is the relationship between people and things. The capacity of inanimate objects to take over and rule our lives has always fascinated her, and from her acute observation of human frailty, this Edinburgh novelist has created a special world in which writing of great stylistic distinction is coloured with humour, whimsy and poignancy. Peter Beck has left home for the first time, but 'home' in the shape of parcels of jam, sent by his mother, pursues him everywhere. The jam piles up in his bed-sitting room and his attempts to dispose of it without actually throwing it away lead him into compromising or embarrassing situations. The jam comes to dominate his life as ultimately does the furniture he sells and all the other paraphernalia with which people clutter their lives. The publishers are reissuing Elspeth Davie s first three works of fiction simultaneously in 1984 in both Britain and in the United States of America.