Master of the Game
Encyclopedia
Master of the Game is a novel by Sidney Sheldon
, first published in hardback format in 1982. Spanning six generations in the lives of the fictional MacGregor/Blackwell family, the critically acclaimed novel debuted at number one on the New York Times Bestseller List. It was later adapted into a 1984 television miniseries
.
On August 4, 2009 (two years after Sheldon's death), William Morrow and Company
released a sequel
, Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game
, written by Tilly Bagshawe
.
in June by Thorndike Pr., in paperback format by Warner Books in August, and was later released by Pan Books
, in December of the same year. The novel was re-released by Warner Books in 1988. In 1993, Master Of The Game was part of an omnibus edition by a publishing company named, Diamond Books, which was owned by HarperCollins Publishers. The other two books in the omnibus were Bloodline (1977) and Rage of Angels
(1980), both major bestsellers by Sidney Sheldon
. The most recent version of the book was printed in April 2005 by HarperCollins
Ltd.
The story then moves one hundred years back to the arrival of Scotsman
Jamie MacGregor (1865–1894) in Klipdrift, South Africa in 1883 to seek his fortune. He is soon defrauded by a wealthy Dutch storekeeper, Salomon Van Der Merwe, who steals his diamonds and leaves him in the desert to die. Jamie is rescued and taken to Capetown by van der Merwe's Bantu servant Banda. Jamie plans his revenge, joined by Banda, who seeks vengeance for his younger sister who was raped and killed by Salomon. The two sneak into van der Merwe's heavily guarded diamond mines in the Namib Desert
and succeed in stealing a load of diamonds worth a fortune. Jamie, now rugged and unrecognizable, returns to Klipdrift, cons Salomon into believing him to be a rich businessman and violates his daughter Margaret who gradually falls in love with him. However, when Jamie learns that Margaret is pregnant by him, he refuses to marry her and reveals to Salomon his true identity. The violation of Margaret's chastity becomes the talk of the town and Salomon plunges into depression and starts drinking; he soon commits suicide, an unhappy man. Jamie, initially, despises Margaret, but when she gives birth to a son, Jamie develops extreme fondness of his son and consents to marrying Margaret for the sake of their young son, Jamie, Jr. (1886–1893). Jamie creates a company called Kruger Brent (named after two guards who were calling each other in the diamond field) and pours all his attention into the business. At one point, after Kruger-Brent takes over the diamond mines, a young American named David Blackwell attempts to rob the mines in exactly the same way as Jamie and Banda did, but is caught by the guards. Jamie, feeling sympathy for Blackwell, gives him a job in the company. Jamie likes his determination and he works his way through the ranks becoming a Kruger-Brent executive. Banda, meanwhile, reunites with Jamie and informs him that he is using his share of the diamond fortune to discreetly fight against the government for Bantu rights. Over the years, Jamie finally abandons his vendetta, but never really loves Margaret. Instead, he falls for a young prostitute also named Margaret. He comes home one night drunk, and mistakes his wife for his favorite prostitute, and they make love. In 1892, Jamie and Margaret have a daughter Kate. A year later, Jamie, Jr. is mistakenly murdered in a Bantu uprising led by Banda, causing Jamie to have a stroke from which he later dies. Margaret takes over Kruger Brent to secure Kate's future and hires Blackwell to aid her.
Kate grows up beautiful, strong-willed and manipulative. Having fallen in love with David Blackwell, who is 22 years older to her, as a teenager she is determined to marry him, and thwarts his engagement by buying the company owned by his fiancee's father. Kate and David later get married, move to NY and then David enlists in the army during World War I and is away for four years. He then returns home safe and later Kate becomes pregnant, but when she is seven months pregnant David is killed in a mine explosion, causing her to go into premature labor and give birth to a son, Anthony "Tony" James Blackwell (b. 1924). Like her father before her, Kate pours her life into Kruger Brent with passion, making it a global conglomerate. She naturally expects Tony to take over Kruger Brent, but Tony is more interested in becoming an artist. While he clearly has the potential to become a world-class artist, Kate secretly destroys Tony's career by paying a notable French critic to give negative comments on Tony's work because Kate strongly believes he is wasting his life as an artist and that there were "tens and thousands of painters in the world and my son was not meant to be one among them". Kate feels sad about Tony's disappointment and unhappiness but is determined to get him out of it. Kate later manipulates him into marrying Marianne Hoffmann, whose father owns a scientific patent she covets. The marriage is happy, but Marianne is told by a doctor that pregnancy is out of the question as she would be at risk for a stroke. When she tells Kate who is now a good friend of hers this, Kate is in denial about Marianne's condition and tells her that doctors could be wrong and to go ahead with a pregnancy. In 1950, Marianne becomes pregnant, but when she is taken to the hospital to give birth her blood pressure goes out of control and she has a stroke. An emergency Caesarian section is performed and twin girls are delivered, but Marianne dies before the second girl is delivered. Her doctor tells Tony that he had warned Marianne of the dangers but that Kate told her to ignore them. The incident, along with the coincidental revelation that Kate manipulated and ultimately destroyed his entire art career, drives Tony mad and he tries to kill his mother in revenge. She survives the gunshot wound, but Tony is committed to an institution. Kate is heart broken that her son felt this way about her but she is determined to survive.
Kate takes in her two identical looking granddaughters, whom she names Eve and Alexandra, to raise. Eve, ruthless and cunning, sees Alexandra as an interloper and repeatedly attempts to kill her starting when they are young children, taking advantage of their identical looks. Alexandra is thought to be clumsy and accident-prone as they grow up and Kate clearly favors Eve as the heir apparent to Kruger Brent, but when Eve tries to implicate Alexandra in a sex scandal Kate realizes the truth about Eve and disinherits her, giving her only a small allowance and pays attention to Alexandra. She also does not tell Alexandra the truth about Eve but tells her that "Eve chose her own life". Enraged, Eve plots revenge against both her sister and grandmother. She meets George Mellis, the black sheep of a wealthy Greek family, and seduces him into helping her. Mellis is handsome and cultured, but he is also a violent sadist and homosexual. Eve, knowing this, holds it over his head as she reveals her scheme—to get Alexandra to fall in love with and marry him, after which he will murder her and cause Kate to die of grief. Cued by Eve, Mellis woos Alexandra by being the perfect man who loves all the things she loves, and Alexandra does fall madly in love with him and they marry. Eve continues to taunt Mellis, and one night he snaps and attacks Eve, brutally assaulting her. She eventually recovers thanks to the work of a talented but mousy plastic surgeon Keith Webster and uses the beating to get back into her grandmother's good graces. Kate melts and takes Eve back in and puts her back in the will, making Mellis superfluous. Eve changes tactics, fakes a scar, and begins visiting a psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Templeton pretending to be a depressed, suicidal Alexandra; the plan is that Mellis will take Alexandra out on a yacht where he will throw her overboard and make it appear as if she killed herself. When Mellis gets on the boat with whom he believes to be Alexandra, he instead finds Eve, who stabs him to death. In the course of the investigation Eve's plastic surgeon, Dr. Keith Webster, overhears a remark about the scar on Eve's head. Having fallen in love with her, he goes to her and reminds her that he left no scar and knows that she killed Mellis. When she tries to deny it, he offers her a deal—if they are married, he will not be forced to testify against her. Eve marries him but cheats on him flagrantly with a young actor. When the actor makes a joke about her laugh lines she demands that Webster repair them. Webster deliberately destroys her face and proves to be a master manipulator himself, making Eve completely dependent on him. Alexandra, meanwhile, falls in love with the psychiatrist Peter Templeton; they marry and have a son, Robert.
The book closes at Kate's ninetieth birthday party with all her relatives present. Robert, now eight, is turning into a talented pianist. Kate sees him as Kruger Brent's heir but Peter laughs her off and asks her if she never gave up. Alexandra too tells Kate that she is happy doing whatever Peter wants. Looking around at her family, including Tony, who was released from the institution for the occasion, and a masked Eve, Kate still believes that she acted in the best interest of all and that it was she who has been cheated, even though everyone in her family has been negatively affected by her actions. In the last line of the book she tells her great-grandson, Robert that she would introduce him to the great musician Zubin Mehta. At this point the readers are left to interpret the ending - does she sincerely means it and has she really changed, or is she planning a repeat of what she did to her son Tony?
, staying there for 11 weeks, and remaining on the list itself for 40 weeks. The book became the fourth bestselling novel of 1982 in the United States, as recorded by The New York Times
. The novel was also selected to be a Main Selection of The Literary Guild
.
In critical reviewing, The New York Review of Books
stated that the book was "compulsively readable", and praised the author by saying "Any writer who can get his audience to ask breathlessly, 'What next?' needs no help from this or any other envious reviewer." Publishers Weekly
called the book an "engaging and absorbing family saga", while the Los Angeles Times
Review of Books commented that Sheldon was "a genius... at writing potboilers. In 'Master of the Game' he has outdone even himself". The Los Angeles Times also reviewed the lack of sex in the book. "This viewer hoped for a wee spot of sex to relieve the monotony. The business of sexual union is depicted with curious, witless brevity" The New York Times disagree, stating that "If your reading taste runs to rape, sodomy, homosexuality, and numerous other fleshy diversions, be assured; Mr. Sheldon has something for you." In Massachusetts, the Worcester Sunday Telegram reviews that "the title of this book is an apt description of the author. In the business of creating hard-to-put-down bestsellers, Sidney Sheldon is indeed the master of the game.", while USA Today
praises Sheldon by saying that he is"a master storyteller at the top of the game." In Europe, the London Review of Books
categorizes the main protagonist
of the novel, Kate Blackwell as being "presented as some kind of role model, but it is the sort of role made popular in olden times by Joan Crawford
".
The Los Angeles Times concludes the book review with "This book is really a number of silly little stories strung loosely together like 'schlenters' (fools diamonds) about to fall off a string of dental floss.", referring to terms used in South Africa, while the London Review of Books ended with "This particular story is so schematically written that it could be used as a script for a film which has not yet been made but will undoubtedly proceed, as of right, to the wide screen."
adaptation aired beginning on February 19, 1984, starring Dyan Cannon
as Kate Blackwell, Ian Charleson
as Jamie MacGregor, David Birney
as David Blackwell, Harry Hamlin
as Tony Blackwell, Johnny Sekka
as Banda, and Fernando Allende
as George Mellis, with several notable but uncredited cameos, including Alan Dobie
(as MacMillan) and Stratford Johns
(as Zimmerman). The miniseries was produced by CBS Television and Rosemont Productions International Ltd. It was nominated for the Emmy Award
for "Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition for a Limited Series or a Special" for the first part of the series. The miniseries was released on DVD
on May 4, 2009.
Sidney Sheldon
Sidney Sheldon was an Academy Award-winning American writer. His TV works spanned a 20-year period during which he created The Patty Duke Show , I Dream of Jeannie and Hart to Hart , but he became most famous after he turned 50 and began writing best-selling novels such as Master of the Game ,...
, first published in hardback format in 1982. Spanning six generations in the lives of the fictional MacGregor/Blackwell family, the critically acclaimed novel debuted at number one on the New York Times Bestseller List. It was later adapted into a 1984 television miniseries
Miniseries
A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...
.
On August 4, 2009 (two years after Sheldon's death), William Morrow and Company
William Morrow and Company
William Morrow and Company is an American publishing company founded by William Morrow in 1926. The company was acquired by Scott Foresman in 1967, and sold to Hearst Corporation in 1981. It was sold along to the News Corporation in 1999...
released a sequel
Sequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
, Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game
Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game
Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game is a 2009 novel by Tilly Bagshawe. It is the sequel to Sidney Sheldon's critically acclaimed 1982 novel Master of the Game, which had debuted at number one on the New York Times Bestseller List and was later adapted into a 1984 television miniseries...
, written by Tilly Bagshawe
Tilly Bagshawe
Tilly Bagshawe is a British freelance journalist and author.Bagshawe was born in Lambeth Hospital, London, the daughter of Nicholas Wilfrid Bagshawe & Daphne Margaret née Triggs . Educated at Woldingham School, Surrey, she went up to Cambridge University at the age of eighteen with her...
.
Publication history
Master of the Game has been translated into numerous languages, and reprinted seven times. It was originally published by William Morrow & Co. in 1982. In 1983, the book was reprinted four times; in January, by HarperCollinsHarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
in June by Thorndike Pr., in paperback format by Warner Books in August, and was later released by Pan Books
Pan Books
Pan Books is an imprint which first became active in the 1940s and is now part of the British-based Macmillan Publishers owned by German publishers, Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group....
, in December of the same year. The novel was re-released by Warner Books in 1988. In 1993, Master Of The Game was part of an omnibus edition by a publishing company named, Diamond Books, which was owned by HarperCollins Publishers. The other two books in the omnibus were Bloodline (1977) and Rage of Angels
Rage of Angels
Rage of Angels is a 1980 novel by Sidney Sheldon. The novel revolves around young attorney Jennifer Parker, as she rises as a successful lawyer after being framed for threatening the chief witness against a Mafia boss by mistakenly giving him a dead canary with a broken neck which in turn leads to...
(1980), both major bestsellers by Sidney Sheldon
Sidney Sheldon
Sidney Sheldon was an Academy Award-winning American writer. His TV works spanned a 20-year period during which he created The Patty Duke Show , I Dream of Jeannie and Hart to Hart , but he became most famous after he turned 50 and began writing best-selling novels such as Master of the Game ,...
. The most recent version of the book was printed in April 2005 by HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
Ltd.
Plot
The story begins with Kate Blackwell's ninetieth birthday celebrations in 1982 and is told in flashback.The story then moves one hundred years back to the arrival of Scotsman
Scotsman
Scotsman may mean:* a man from Scotland, in common parlance - see also Scottish people.* No true Scotsman, a common logical fallacy.*The Scotsman, a national newspaper based in Edinburgh, Scotland....
Jamie MacGregor (1865–1894) in Klipdrift, South Africa in 1883 to seek his fortune. He is soon defrauded by a wealthy Dutch storekeeper, Salomon Van Der Merwe, who steals his diamonds and leaves him in the desert to die. Jamie is rescued and taken to Capetown by van der Merwe's Bantu servant Banda. Jamie plans his revenge, joined by Banda, who seeks vengeance for his younger sister who was raped and killed by Salomon. The two sneak into van der Merwe's heavily guarded diamond mines in the Namib Desert
Namib Desert
The Namib Desert is a desert in Namibia and southwest Angola that forms part of the Namib-Naukluft National Park, the largest game reserve in Africa. The name "Namib" is of Nama origin and means "vast place"...
and succeed in stealing a load of diamonds worth a fortune. Jamie, now rugged and unrecognizable, returns to Klipdrift, cons Salomon into believing him to be a rich businessman and violates his daughter Margaret who gradually falls in love with him. However, when Jamie learns that Margaret is pregnant by him, he refuses to marry her and reveals to Salomon his true identity. The violation of Margaret's chastity becomes the talk of the town and Salomon plunges into depression and starts drinking; he soon commits suicide, an unhappy man. Jamie, initially, despises Margaret, but when she gives birth to a son, Jamie develops extreme fondness of his son and consents to marrying Margaret for the sake of their young son, Jamie, Jr. (1886–1893). Jamie creates a company called Kruger Brent (named after two guards who were calling each other in the diamond field) and pours all his attention into the business. At one point, after Kruger-Brent takes over the diamond mines, a young American named David Blackwell attempts to rob the mines in exactly the same way as Jamie and Banda did, but is caught by the guards. Jamie, feeling sympathy for Blackwell, gives him a job in the company. Jamie likes his determination and he works his way through the ranks becoming a Kruger-Brent executive. Banda, meanwhile, reunites with Jamie and informs him that he is using his share of the diamond fortune to discreetly fight against the government for Bantu rights. Over the years, Jamie finally abandons his vendetta, but never really loves Margaret. Instead, he falls for a young prostitute also named Margaret. He comes home one night drunk, and mistakes his wife for his favorite prostitute, and they make love. In 1892, Jamie and Margaret have a daughter Kate. A year later, Jamie, Jr. is mistakenly murdered in a Bantu uprising led by Banda, causing Jamie to have a stroke from which he later dies. Margaret takes over Kruger Brent to secure Kate's future and hires Blackwell to aid her.
Kate grows up beautiful, strong-willed and manipulative. Having fallen in love with David Blackwell, who is 22 years older to her, as a teenager she is determined to marry him, and thwarts his engagement by buying the company owned by his fiancee's father. Kate and David later get married, move to NY and then David enlists in the army during World War I and is away for four years. He then returns home safe and later Kate becomes pregnant, but when she is seven months pregnant David is killed in a mine explosion, causing her to go into premature labor and give birth to a son, Anthony "Tony" James Blackwell (b. 1924). Like her father before her, Kate pours her life into Kruger Brent with passion, making it a global conglomerate. She naturally expects Tony to take over Kruger Brent, but Tony is more interested in becoming an artist. While he clearly has the potential to become a world-class artist, Kate secretly destroys Tony's career by paying a notable French critic to give negative comments on Tony's work because Kate strongly believes he is wasting his life as an artist and that there were "tens and thousands of painters in the world and my son was not meant to be one among them". Kate feels sad about Tony's disappointment and unhappiness but is determined to get him out of it. Kate later manipulates him into marrying Marianne Hoffmann, whose father owns a scientific patent she covets. The marriage is happy, but Marianne is told by a doctor that pregnancy is out of the question as she would be at risk for a stroke. When she tells Kate who is now a good friend of hers this, Kate is in denial about Marianne's condition and tells her that doctors could be wrong and to go ahead with a pregnancy. In 1950, Marianne becomes pregnant, but when she is taken to the hospital to give birth her blood pressure goes out of control and she has a stroke. An emergency Caesarian section is performed and twin girls are delivered, but Marianne dies before the second girl is delivered. Her doctor tells Tony that he had warned Marianne of the dangers but that Kate told her to ignore them. The incident, along with the coincidental revelation that Kate manipulated and ultimately destroyed his entire art career, drives Tony mad and he tries to kill his mother in revenge. She survives the gunshot wound, but Tony is committed to an institution. Kate is heart broken that her son felt this way about her but she is determined to survive.
Kate takes in her two identical looking granddaughters, whom she names Eve and Alexandra, to raise. Eve, ruthless and cunning, sees Alexandra as an interloper and repeatedly attempts to kill her starting when they are young children, taking advantage of their identical looks. Alexandra is thought to be clumsy and accident-prone as they grow up and Kate clearly favors Eve as the heir apparent to Kruger Brent, but when Eve tries to implicate Alexandra in a sex scandal Kate realizes the truth about Eve and disinherits her, giving her only a small allowance and pays attention to Alexandra. She also does not tell Alexandra the truth about Eve but tells her that "Eve chose her own life". Enraged, Eve plots revenge against both her sister and grandmother. She meets George Mellis, the black sheep of a wealthy Greek family, and seduces him into helping her. Mellis is handsome and cultured, but he is also a violent sadist and homosexual. Eve, knowing this, holds it over his head as she reveals her scheme—to get Alexandra to fall in love with and marry him, after which he will murder her and cause Kate to die of grief. Cued by Eve, Mellis woos Alexandra by being the perfect man who loves all the things she loves, and Alexandra does fall madly in love with him and they marry. Eve continues to taunt Mellis, and one night he snaps and attacks Eve, brutally assaulting her. She eventually recovers thanks to the work of a talented but mousy plastic surgeon Keith Webster and uses the beating to get back into her grandmother's good graces. Kate melts and takes Eve back in and puts her back in the will, making Mellis superfluous. Eve changes tactics, fakes a scar, and begins visiting a psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Templeton pretending to be a depressed, suicidal Alexandra; the plan is that Mellis will take Alexandra out on a yacht where he will throw her overboard and make it appear as if she killed herself. When Mellis gets on the boat with whom he believes to be Alexandra, he instead finds Eve, who stabs him to death. In the course of the investigation Eve's plastic surgeon, Dr. Keith Webster, overhears a remark about the scar on Eve's head. Having fallen in love with her, he goes to her and reminds her that he left no scar and knows that she killed Mellis. When she tries to deny it, he offers her a deal—if they are married, he will not be forced to testify against her. Eve marries him but cheats on him flagrantly with a young actor. When the actor makes a joke about her laugh lines she demands that Webster repair them. Webster deliberately destroys her face and proves to be a master manipulator himself, making Eve completely dependent on him. Alexandra, meanwhile, falls in love with the psychiatrist Peter Templeton; they marry and have a son, Robert.
The book closes at Kate's ninetieth birthday party with all her relatives present. Robert, now eight, is turning into a talented pianist. Kate sees him as Kruger Brent's heir but Peter laughs her off and asks her if she never gave up. Alexandra too tells Kate that she is happy doing whatever Peter wants. Looking around at her family, including Tony, who was released from the institution for the occasion, and a masked Eve, Kate still believes that she acted in the best interest of all and that it was she who has been cheated, even though everyone in her family has been negatively affected by her actions. In the last line of the book she tells her great-grandson, Robert that she would introduce him to the great musician Zubin Mehta. At this point the readers are left to interpret the ending - does she sincerely means it and has she really changed, or is she planning a repeat of what she did to her son Tony?
Reception
The reception to Master of the Game by the public was mostly positive, with the book debuting at #1 on the New York Times Best Seller listNew York Times Best Seller list
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication...
, staying there for 11 weeks, and remaining on the list itself for 40 weeks. The book became the fourth bestselling novel of 1982 in the United States, as recorded by The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. The novel was also selected to be a Main Selection of The Literary Guild
Book of the Month Club
The Book of the Month Club is a United States mail-order book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers.The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc...
.
In critical reviewing, The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
stated that the book was "compulsively readable", and praised the author by saying "Any writer who can get his audience to ask breathlessly, 'What next?' needs no help from this or any other envious reviewer." Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
called the book an "engaging and absorbing family saga", while the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
Review of Books commented that Sheldon was "a genius... at writing potboilers. In 'Master of the Game' he has outdone even himself". The Los Angeles Times also reviewed the lack of sex in the book. "This viewer hoped for a wee spot of sex to relieve the monotony. The business of sexual union is depicted with curious, witless brevity" The New York Times disagree, stating that "If your reading taste runs to rape, sodomy, homosexuality, and numerous other fleshy diversions, be assured; Mr. Sheldon has something for you." In Massachusetts, the Worcester Sunday Telegram reviews that "the title of this book is an apt description of the author. In the business of creating hard-to-put-down bestsellers, Sidney Sheldon is indeed the master of the game.", while USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
praises Sheldon by saying that he is"a master storyteller at the top of the game." In Europe, the London Review of Books
London Review of Books
The London Review of Books is a fortnightly British magazine of literary and intellectual essays.-History:The LRB was founded in 1979, during the year-long lock-out at The Times, by publisher A...
categorizes the main protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
of the novel, Kate Blackwell as being "presented as some kind of role model, but it is the sort of role made popular in olden times by Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford , born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre....
".
The Los Angeles Times concludes the book review with "This book is really a number of silly little stories strung loosely together like 'schlenters' (fools diamonds) about to fall off a string of dental floss.", referring to terms used in South Africa, while the London Review of Books ended with "This particular story is so schematically written that it could be used as a script for a film which has not yet been made but will undoubtedly proceed, as of right, to the wide screen."
Adaptations
A television miniseriesMiniseries
A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...
adaptation aired beginning on February 19, 1984, starring Dyan Cannon
Dyan Cannon
Dyan Cannon is an American film and television actress, director, screenwriter, editor, and producer.-Early life:...
as Kate Blackwell, Ian Charleson
Ian Charleson
Ian Charleson was a Scottish stage and film actor. He is best known internationally for his starring role as Olympic athlete and missionary Eric Liddell, in the Oscar-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire. He is also well known for his portrayal of Rev...
as Jamie MacGregor, David Birney
David Birney
David Edwin Birney is an American actor/director whose career has performances in both contemporary and classical roles in theatre, film and television. He has three children, a daughter Kate, and twins, Peter and Mollie....
as David Blackwell, Harry Hamlin
Harry Hamlin
Harry Robinson Hamlin is an American film and television actor, known for his role as Perseus in the 1981 fantasy film Clash of the Titans, and as Michael Kuzak in the legal drama series L.A...
as Tony Blackwell, Johnny Sekka
Johnny Sekka
Johnny Sekka was a British film and television actor.Born Lamine Sekka in Dakar, Senegal, the youngest of five siblings, his Gambian father died shortly after his birth...
as Banda, and Fernando Allende
Fernando Allende
Fernando Allende is a Mexican singer, actor, painter, film producer, and film director. Allende began singing in 1959, at the age of seven.-Private life:...
as George Mellis, with several notable but uncredited cameos, including Alan Dobie
Alan Dobie
Alan Russell Dobie , is a British actor.Dobie was born in Wombwell, Yorkshire, England, to George Russell and Sarah Kate Dobie. His father was a mining engineer and his mother's family were farmers. He was married to actress Rachel Roberts from 1955-61 then married Maureen Scott in 1963...
(as MacMillan) and Stratford Johns
Stratford Johns
Stratford Johns, born Alan Edgar Stratford-Johns, was a popular British stage, film and television actor who is best remembered for his starring role as Detective Inspector Charlie Barlow in the innovative and long-running BBC police series Z-Cars, created by Troy Kennedy-Martin.-Early life:Johns...
(as Zimmerman). The miniseries was produced by CBS Television and Rosemont Productions International Ltd. It was nominated for the Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
for "Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition for a Limited Series or a Special" for the first part of the series. The miniseries was released on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
on May 4, 2009.