ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME by A.E. Coppard

“It was a rann of a name, but it had euphony!”

Jaffa Codling or Gilbert Cannister, this tale of a Jekyll and Hyde, where, like Gabriel’s toy sword, neither is bad or good, makes the clock tick as if its ticking is an ‘indecent act’, indeed, a clock as ‘mocker’…
Yet, a story of pervading ‘brilliance’, whereby we think its plot is being told by a ghost of this named man amidst his own family of wife, and three children: Adam, Eve and Gabriel — a tale of ‘fiendish door-handles’, perceived marital disloyalty, a gardener called Bond who left the story before it finished, and Gabriel’s box that emitted wondrous things, including a “a fish like a gold carp,…”. This, his story’s rannamaari? Or, more likely, a ‘vessel of light’? Yes, a husband who, after all, ran not away from his wife, but straight through her. The Child as pinched from dream.
A treasured work that apotheosises and supplements many of the stories of Walter de la Mare currently being read.
Mare= mari= a husband all at sea?

“He was like a new Adam flung into some old Eden.”

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More reviews of AEC: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2022/10/03/the-field-of-mustard-by-a-e-coppard/