Susan Hill, Strange Meeting

Gina Wisker (University of Brighton)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1973

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Like many other writers of the contemporary period such as Pat Barker and Sebastian Faulkes, Susan Hill has chosen to recuperate a version of a historical moment, that of the First World War. Strange Meeting, named after one of Wilfred Owen's poems, concentrates on a realistic representation of relationships between young men in the trenches. Like Pat Barker's trilogy which begins with Regeneration, Hill's Strange Meeting explores the suffering of shell-shock victims, notably Harris, a young soldier who regresses to meaningless inarticulacies and to a foetal state, hiding in a gap in the cellar wall to avoid the horrors of the surrounding war. Male friendships and questions about varieties of masculinity are …

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314 words

Citation: Wisker, Gina. "Strange Meeting". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 October 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1832, accessed 27 November 2024.]

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