Final Demands is the third volume in Frederic Raphael’s trilogy, which began with the publication of The Glittering Prizes in 1976.
Final Demands is the third volume in Frederic Raphael’s trilogy, which began with the publication of The Glittering Prizes in 1976. The second in the series, Fame and Fortune, did not follow until 2007; and showed a distinct shift in mood — a silting up of bitterness and disdain.
In The Glittering Prizes, Raphael was more tenderly ambiguous towards the ambitions of his characters. Perhaps this is because their obvious faults (and particularly those of his central character, Adam Morris) are so forgivable in the young. They are evidence of youthful insecurity: all that striving for effect, the exhausting and competitive badinage, the nervous one-upmanship, the pretentiousness, the chippiness. Adam’s hypersensitivity about his Jewishness (as another character points out, he’s always the first to bring it up) is particularly touching: it is obvious that he is unsure not only how much or how little it might mean to others, but how much or how little it means to him.
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