Story: ‘The Virgin’
David Plante, 3 April 1986
Elizabeth was in bed. The dog had its front paws between her breasts, and, its tongue out, it stared at her as she spoke to it.
David Plante
David Plante a Franco-American living in London, is a contributor to the New Yorker. His books include Difficult Women – a memoir of Jean Rhys, Sonia Orwell and Germaine Greer – and, his most recent novel, The Catholic.
Pieces about David Plante in the LRB
Kitty still pines for his dearest Dub: Gossip
Andrew O’Hagan, 6 February 2014
The much gossiped about George Eliot absolutely hated the idea of people talking behind their hands.
Dying Falls
John Lanchester, 23 July 1987
As well as having themes, preoccupations and voices, writers often have a favourite cadence, which is sometimes apparent as the shape towards which their fictions tend. If they do have such a...
Kiss me, Hardy
Humphrey Carpenter, 15 November 1984
Howard Jacobson’s first novel, Coming from Behind, was published last year, and made one think that a new exponent of the comic academic narrative had arrived. Jacobson’s hero, Sefton...
Hagiography
Mary-Kay Wilmers, 3 March 1983
One evening in December 1975 David Plante called on his friend, the novelist Jean Rhys, who was staying in a hotel in South Kensington: ‘a big dreary hotel’, she said, ‘filled...
Point of Principle
Michael Irwin, 2 April 1981
The Country, which is concerned with old age, death and family bereavement, is adroitly restricted to an account of four visits. The first two, at intervals of a year, are paid by Daniel...
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