We have known Alan Alexander Milne since childhood, thanks to the Winnie the Pooh books. But we are almost unaware of his adult prose — fascinating, refined, imbued with subtle English humor and incredibly popular during the author’s lifetime, in the middle of the last century.
1. The vicissitudes of love. While young Londoner Teddy walks with his American cousin Amelia, showing her around the city and being jealous of family friends or a raccoon in the zoo, while high society men unsuccessfully court the irresistible Chloe Marr, «a woman without a heart», Alan A. Milne jokes about The Thames and the Tower, cricket and croquet, over colleges and tea and, at times, it seems, over himself — of course, with the most serious expression on his face. Of course, both of these novels are not sitcoms, but there are plenty of funny situations.
2. The charm of English humor. He is cordial and gentle, but betrothed with wit. It is elegant and fundamentally far from vulgarity. It is built on a game — words, sounds, mind, associations. He is weightless, like fog, with him things lose their sharpness of outlines, and the meanings are doubled. And it is impossible to resist him.
3. Such a different laugh. These Milne novels are polar. Teddy from Lovers in London, like its author, is only 23 years old, and they both joke in the way only youth can: carefree and unrestrained. Chloe Marr is the final novel of 64-year-old Milne, who survived two world wars and looks at the ups and downs of relations between men and women with a good-natured smile.
Translation from English by Olga Guseva and Anna Komarinets.
AST, 478 p., 306 rub.