At 07:57 PM 22/01/2004 -0600, you wrote:
>THE CHILL is my personal favorite Ross
Macdonald.
>
>SPOILERS
>
>There's a character in the book who has a much older
wife - in fact, she
>passes for his mother. The book was written just a
few years after
>Chandler's death. Now Chandler's wife was 16 years
older than he was. Does
>anyone know if this in any way inspired any of the
characters in THE CHILL?
Not to discount the possibility, but Macdonald's biographers
suggest his work was strongly influenced by his own complex
family life. His father was absent most of his youth, which
he spent living with his sickly mother in a dependent
relationship with various relatives, not including a short
period in a military academy paid for by relatives of his
father. Much of this time was with his mother, aunt and
maternal grandmother, who was a Mennonite, a relatively
strict religious order that Macdonald's mother is said to
have rebelled against, something she had to swallow after
being abandoned by her husband. So it seems the familial
politics of living with older women may have had other
influences too.
Best Kerry
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