The Book of Ebenezer Le Page


The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a novel by Gerald Basil Edwards first published in the United Kingdom by Hamish Hamilton in 1981, and in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf in the same year. It has since been published by Penguin books and New York Review Books in their classics series, as well as in French and Italian.
It is the fictionalised autobiography of an archetypal Guernseyman, Ebenezer Le Page, who lives through the dramatic changes in the island of the Guernsey, Channel Islands from the late nineteenth century, through to the 1960s.

Plot summary

Ebenezer was born in the late nineteenth century, and dies in the early 1960s. He lived his whole life in the Vale. He never married, despite a few flings with local girls, and a tempestuous relationship with Liza Queripel of Pleinmont. He only left the island once, to travel to Jersey to watch the Muratti. For most of his life he was a grower and fisherman, although he also served in the North regiment of the Royal Guernsey Militia and did some jobbing work for the States of Guernsey in the latter part of his life. Guernsey is a microcosm of the world as Dublin is to James Joyce and Wessex is to Hardy. After a life fraught with difficulties and full of moving episodes, Ebenezer is ready to die happy, bequeathing his pot of gold and autobiography to the young artist he befriends, after an incident in which the latter smashed his greenhouse.

Characters

  1. Life in a close and, in many respects, closed community.
  2. Family relationships: falling in and out with one another.
  3. Non-sexual but close male friendship.
  4. The lifelong, tempestuous love affair, which includes prolonged periods of non-communication, with Liza Queripel. They have much sexual tension between them yet, somehow, seem to agree that sleeping together would make things ordinary. This plays out the truth that many of the most enduring love relationships are those that are never consummated.

    Life

Art student Edward Chaney met Edwards in his old age, when he was living a reclusive life near Weymouth in Dorset. Edwards had had a fraught and difficult life. He left Guernsey to study at Bristol University. He then moved to London where he encountered group of writers, which included his friends John Middleton Murry, J. S. Collis and Stephen Potter. There was an anticipation that he would become the next D. H. Lawrence, and he was in fact commissioned by Jonathan Cape to write Lawrence's biography, before his death.
Instead he published nothing more than a handful of articles for Murry's Adelphi magazine. He married, had children, divorced and went through a series of jobs, teaching at Toynbee Hall., as an itinerant drama teacher, a minor civil servant in London, eventually retiring to the West Country. His quarry-owning father had effectively disinherited him where the family home in Guernsey was concerned, by remarrying.
When he met Chaney, he was pouring experience and literary know-how into one last attempt at a major novel. Chaney encouraged Edwards to complete his book, which Edwards then dedicated to him and his wife, giving him the copyright. The immaculate typescript was rejected by many publishers but, eventually, at Hamish Hamilton, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson accepted it with enthusiasm.
There is a parallel between this real-life story and the story in the novel, in which Ebenezer bequeaths his autobiography to his young artist friend Neville Falla, the motorcycling rebel with a heart of gold.

Literary significance and criticism

Since its publication in 1981, it has been critically acclaimed, as well as winning the admiration of the people of Guernsey for so accurately capturing the island and its character.
John Fowles wrote an enthusiastic introduction to the Book, it was very favorably reviewed by William Golding, among several others, and Harold Bloom included it in The Western Canon. Stephen Orgel wrote that it was 'one of the greatest novels of the 20th century'.
Although Penguin let it go out of print, it was reprinted by New York Review Books Classics in 2007. It has meanwhile been published in French and Italian.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

It has been adapted for a BBC Radio 4 series, as well as a stage play by Anthony Wilkinson The Islander which premiered at the Theatre Royal, Lincoln in 2002. In both of these adaptations, the role of Ebenezer was played by Guernsey-born actor Roy Dotrice, who also reads the unabridged audiobook of the novel, in an old man's voice and Guernsey accent.
There have been unsuccessful attempts to turn the novel into a feature film.

Release details

The book was published by Hamish Hamilton 1981, followed by Penguin and Knopf in America the following year. It had been the subject of numerous rejections during his lifetime, but attempts to get it published were continued after his death in 1976 by Edward Chaney, who had befriended the author in his old age.
Christopher Sinclair Stevenson asked John Fowles to write an introduction which no doubt helped to draw attention to the publication. The novel was originally intended to form the first part of a trilogy, entitled Sarnia Cherie: The Book of Ebenezer Le Page. Sarnia Cherie refers to the Guernsey anthem, and was retained in the title of the French translation. The other two books were to be called Le Boud'lo: the Book of Philip Le Moigne and La Gran'-mère du Chimquière: the Book of Jean le Féniant. A draft of the second part was destroyed by the author before his death.
For more details of the author, Gerald B Edwards, and how Edward Chaney eventually managed to get his Book published, see Chaney's biography Genius Friend: G.B. Edwards and The Book of Ebenezer Le Page.
The work has been translated into French and Italian. The French version, under the title ', translated by Jeanine Hérisson, was published in 1982 by Editions du Seuil. The Italian version translation, ' was published by Elliot Edizioni, Rome in 2007.

Book covers

Critical reception