Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing
By May Sarton
1965
First Published
3.84
Average Rating
220
Number of Pages
May Sarton's ninth novel explores a woman's struggle to reconcile the claims of life and art, to transmute passion and pain into poetry. As it opens, Hilary Stevens, a renowned poet in her seventies, is talking with Mar, an intense young man who has sought her out and whose passionate despair reminds her of herself when young. Mar has had an unhappy love affair with a man. Bewildered by both his sexuality and his writing talent, he flings his anguish against Hilary s brusque, sympathetic intelligence."
Avg Rating
3.84
Number of Ratings
682
5 STARS
29%
4 STARS
36%
3 STARS
28%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
2%
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Author
May Sarton
Author · 51 books
May Sarton was born on May 3, 1912, in Wondelgem, Belgium, and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her first volume of poetry, Encounters in April, was published in 1937 and her first novel, The Single Hound, in 1938. An accomplished memoirist, Sarton boldly came out as a lesbian in her 1965 book Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Her later memoir, Journal of a Solitude, was an account of her experiences as a female artist. Sarton died in York, Maine, on July 16, 1995.
