Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    After the Fireworks: Three Novellas
    After the Fireworks: Three Novellas
    After the Fireworks: Three Novellas
    Audiobook12 hours

    After the Fireworks: Three Novellas

    Written by Aldous Huxley and Gary Giddins

    Narrated by Michael Page and Tom Parks

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    From one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, Aldous Huxley, comes his great novella, set in Rome, about a writer’s affair with a mysterious young fan—now back in print for the first time in the U.S. in more than seventy years and also featuring two other acclaimed short works, plus an original introduction from noted critic Gary Giddins.

    “The psychology of the two individuals is shrewdly mastered.... After the Fireworks displays on Huxley’s part a rare but genuine if elusive sympathy as well as a sound perception of human shortcomings.”—New York Times

    In After the Fireworks, three of Aldous Huxley’s lost classic pieces of short fiction are collected for the first time. In the title novella, Rome is the stunning backdrop where internationally famous novelist Miles Fanning sets out on a walk down Via Condotti toward the Spanish Steps when he encounters the mysterious Pamela Tarn—a beautiful young American admirer of his work who shares a name, as well as conspicuous personality traits, with a character from his most celebrated book. Though there is a considerable age difference between them and they come from different worlds, both are soon irresistibly drawn into a dangerous affair which has unforeseen consequences.

    First published one year before he wrote his classic Brave New World and now back in print for the first time in seventy five years, After the Fireworks is Aldous Huxley at the height of his powers. Featuring an original introduction by National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Gary Giddins, this new collection also includes Uncle Spencer (1924), the story of an aging World War I veteran’s quest for the lost love he met in a prison during the war, and Two or Three Graces (1926), the tale of a passionate and destructive writer’s abusive relationship with an impressionable, bourgeois housewife.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateOct 4, 2016
    ISBN9780062658227
    Author

    Aldous Huxley

    Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) is the author of the classic novels Brave New World, Island, Eyeless in Gaza, and The Genius and the Goddess, as well as such critically acclaimed nonfiction works as The Perennial Philosophy and The Doors of Perception. Born in Surrey, England, and educated at Oxford, he died in Los Angeles, California.

    More audiobooks from Aldous Huxley

    Related to After the Fireworks

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Bloomsberries At War PAUL BAILEY Writing In The Dark: Bloomsbury, The Blitz, And Horizon Magazine

      Jul 28, 2021

      Bloomsbury £20 The subtitle of Will Loxley’s first book does not sound especially adventurous or challenging. Haven’t we, both readers and writers, been here before? It’s not entirely fanciful to imagine a bookshop that sells nothing but biographies,

      3 min read

    • Article

      Bumptious, Bitchy And Belligerent

      Aug 26, 2021

      WILL LOXLEY’S Writing in the Dark, an evocation of London literati in wartime, is a bombshell of a first book. Having steeped himself in the diaries, letters and memoirs of an oddly neglected era in English letters, the author has composed a series o

      5 min read

    • Article

      What Have We Come To?

      Dec 27, 2020

      What Have We Come To?
      5 min read

    • Article

      From The Trojan War To Conflict In Ukraine

      Nov 30, 2023

      THE YEAR 2023 HAS BEENrich in works composed in tempore belli. The most impressive is Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine (William Collins, £26) by General David Petraeus and the historian Andrew Roberts. This is an ambitious and

      6 min read

    • Article

      An Off-kilter Visionary

      Feb 23, 2023

      IN 1952, W.H. AUDEN WAS ASKED by Life magazine to name his favourite writer. He was spoilt for choice: he could have singled out Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, E.M. Forster, J.R.R. Tolkien — who he was a great admirer of — or any number of internationa

      6 min read

    • Article

      Dark Hooks

      Nov 1, 2021

      The critical canon has spent decades wringing its hands over Sylvia Plath’s appropriation of both Jewish identity and the particular tragedy of the Holocaust. In 1969, George Steiner wrote in his essay “In Extremis” that Plath “… was a child, plump a

      9 min read

    • Article

      Fishing As Breathing

      Apr 20, 2022

      Fishing As Breathing
      5 min read

    • Article

      An Off-kilter Visionary

      Feb 23, 2023

      IN 1952, W.H. AUDEN WAS ASKED by Life magazine to name his favourite writer. He was spoilt for choice: he could have singled out Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, E.M. Forster, J.R.R. Tolkien — who he was a great admirer of — or any number of internationa

      6 min read

    • Article

      Memoir & biography

      Apr 3, 2024

      Memoir & biography
      5 min read

    • Article

      Beauty Born Of Ashes

      Dec 1, 2022

      “The Waste Land,” not “The Wasteland” or “Waste Land,” and “not Waste Lands,” T. S. Eliot would correct people regarding the title of his epoch-defining poem. Originally he’d had in mind another title altogether, “He Do the Police in Different Voices

      4 min read

    • Article

      Hilary Mantel Was A Glorious Original – We Have Lost One Of Our Greatest Writers

      Sep 30, 2022

      The death of Dame Hilary Mantel brings an end to one of the most remarkable literary careers of the past half century. Her great historical trilogy, Wolf Hall, earned her two Booker prizes, dominating the cultural landscape of the early 21st century

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Solipsistic Siren

      May 26, 2022

      IN OCTOBER 1926 Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises, with its portrait of the disillusionment, aimless drifting and drinking with little moral compass experienced by many of his age, was published in the U.S. to great acclaim. Those who had

      3 min read

    • Article

      Jena-gadda-da-vida

      Sep 1, 2022

      For a few years at the turn of the 19th century, Jena, a small university town in the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar, was an intellectual Shangri-La. And then, suddenly, it wasn’t. Though its population was barely 4,500, Jena was for a while home to many of th

      4 min read

    • Article

      An Archaeological Inquest

      Sep 1, 2022

      An Archaeological Inquest
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Uses of Laughter

      Aug 11, 2021

      The Uses of Laughter
      19 min read

    • Article

      ALEXANDER LARMAN Not Far from Brideshead

      Mar 9, 2022

      Weidenfeld & Nicolson £20 Literary representations of Oxford between the wars have been everywhere since Brideshead Revisited was published in 1945 – not least in John Betjeman’s Summoned by Bells (1960). Humphrey Carpenter’s group history The Brides

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Matt Seidel

      Dec 9, 2017

      I tend to buy used books in bunches, which means the haul from some expeditions stays buried for weeks, months, years even. For this entry, I highlight three finds that, breaking custom, I bought and read almost immediately this year: Hugo Charteris’

      6 min read

    • Article

      Chequered Progress

      Sep 30, 2022

      Chequered Progress
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Hunger Artist: Thoreau and the Irony of Performance Art

      Jun 23, 2021

      But he offers an interesting lens through which to view both the hunger artist and Thoreau: while they offer their lives as tragic, the audience always receives them as comic. The post The Hunger Artist: Thoreau and the Irony of Performance Art appea

      13 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Aug 8, 2023

      by Iman Mersal, translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger (And Other Stories, ISBN 9781913505721) andotherstories.org On 3 January 1963 the Egyptian writer Enayat al-Zayyat took her own life at the age of 26. Her only completed novel, Love and Silenc

      4 min read

    • Article

      Biography & memoir

      Jun 29, 2022

      Biography & memoir
      13 min read

    • Article

      5 Books Making News This Week: Brexit, Blacklists, and Biographies

      Feb 28, 2017

      Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land, Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash, Jane Mayer’s Dark Money, Zachary Roth’s The Great Suppression and Gary Younge’s Another Day in the Death of America are named finalists for the J. Anthony Lukas Boo

      6 min read

    • Article

      How To Become A Cult Writer

      Apr 1, 2022

      How To Become A Cult Writer
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for After the Fireworks

    3.5/5

    31 ratings10 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Aged 36, Aldous Huxley was a well-established author when he published Brief candles, a collection of four short stories or novellae, in 1930. It is a work which now finds few readers. Brief candles consists of four bleakly satirical tales about unpleasant people: "Chawdron", "The Rest Cure", "The Claxtons" and the longest, "After the Fireworks". The last of these, was chosen and published separately as the novella After the Fireworks by the Hesperus Press in 2009. It is a nice and careful edition, published with a foreword by Fay Weldon and a short glossary, explaining Huxley's references to classical mythology and Italian literature.Huxley's After the Fireworks forms a nice companion to Henry James' The birthplace, also published by the Hesperus Press, reviewed above. In both works the admiration and infatuation of readers with an author forms the main theme.After the Fireworks tells the story of the older, and successful author Miles Fanning, and Pamela Tarn. It is the story of infatuation, initially the irrational admiration of Pamela for Miles, but as the story develops, Miles' attitude or burgeoning amusement with her infatuation turns into a budding romance on his part, as he is falsely led to believe that a romance might be possible. The novella explores all dimensions of the infatuation. Miles is first shown to be cruel, and on the verge of taking advantage of the young Pamela, while he is later shown as fragile as he falls under the spell of the young girl. On the other hand, Pamela is not quite all innocence herself, and is shown to be actively pursuing and scheming in her determination to possess Miles. The turns of the story develop against the backdrop of the warmer climate of Italy.The novella brims with references to classical works of infatuation. Miles Fanning is the author of several novels, his latest entitled "The Return of Eurydice". Towards the end of the novel he laments, asking why Apollo has left him, as he feels his reason has given way to passion. Meanwhile, the darker side of the Orpheus myth is explored likening Miles to the Devil and Pamela to the light, Hell taking the shape of Dante's hell, and far echo's to the infatuation of Beatrice.In her name, Pamela surely reminds readers of the ruthless young epistolary heroine of Samuel Richardson, while the name "Tarn" suggests her true love is hidden. In fact, her crush on Miles stands in the shadow of a truer love for Guy, her boyfriend at home in the colder climate of Scotland.In After the Fireworks, infatuation is described from the classical definition of Freud, whose name appears on the very first page of the story. And as infatuation is the bastard sister of romantic love, and in its adoration the earliest stage of a deeper attachment or even more mature love, the illusion of infatuation inevitably leads to disappointment when learning the truth about a lover, after the emotional fireworks. Huxley's novella takes an interesting turn there as each gets his due.In its treatment of adoration for an author, Huxley's novella After the Fireworks resembles The birthplace by Henry James. However, while in James's work the adoration stands closer to devotion, Huxley tends more to the irrational passion of infatuation. In fact, the mad and ruthless love of Pamela for Miles foreshadows the wild love of fans for the stars of popular mass culture. In that sense, After the Fireworks is still quite relevant to our time.
    • 3/5
      Aldous Huxley's 1930 satirical tale of louche, clever novelist Miles Fanning and his orphaned young fan, Pamela Tarn, is quite suggestive, wordy rather then licentious. Not as morally dubious as Lolita, but subtler.
    • 4/5
      After the Fireworks is the story of aging novelist and womanizer Miles Fanning's brief affair with an adoring young fan, Pamela Tarn. Set in Italy, this novella follows the duration of the couple's affair and the consequences thereof.It's an engaging read and a great sample of Aldous Huxley's non-Brave New World body of work, showing his true mastery of language and how well he handled the twist and turns of plot.This is a stunning and well done edition of this work by Hesperus Press.
    • 4/5
      This Aldous Huxley novel, nicely presented by Hesperus Press in an Early Reviewer edition, is the older man-younger woman chase story which has been around forever. He chases her until she catches him (a saying my mother was fond of quoting). Then they have to live with consequences.Huxley changes voices (his to hers) about three-quarters into the story and the result is that you are somewhat pummeled with the consequences. However, I like Huxley's work generally, and I recommend this short novel for its language--about people, about settings, about the characters.
    • 4/5
      If it's been a while since you've read Aldous Huxley, this short novel, reissued by Hesperus Press, will put you back in touch. It is a fine reminder of his extraordinary ability to handle language, plot and ambiance.After the Fireworks chronicles the brief affair of middle aged Miles Fanning and his adoring young fan, Pamela Tarn. The venue is Italy... hot, sultry and romantic Italy. Huxley leads his two protagonists through a dance of desire, from its sparking inception to blazing inferno to a sputtering finale. Although the reader can see ahead to the conclusion as the plot unfolds, the journey through its twists and turns is rich in detail and sensibility.For those who are only familiar with Huxley's Brave New World, this book is a good segue into some of his other works. It was nice to be reminded again of what a fine writer he was.
    • 3/5
      After The Fireworks, by Aldous Huxley, is a satirical novella first published in 1930, that tells the story of the relationship between a fiftyish successful novelist and a 21 year old adoring fan who is determined to have him for herself. We know it’s satirical because the flyleaf of this new Hesperus Press edition tells us so. Fay Weldon, in the foreword, tells us of its huge impact on her at age 18 in 1950, by which I was at first puzzled. I couldn’t understand the reaction, and her response to the book – which seemed to be to cast herself into the role and attitudes of Pamela, the female protagonist.I could see that the book was trying to be clever. The erudition of the language in places, the verbal sparring between the various characters, the philosophical discussions of art and art history, the allusions to class and social aspirations, and so on. But I couldn’t seem to get the context – I couldn’t see why Weldon had reacted to the book as she described she had.And then suddenly, towards the end I got it. When we see Miles drafting a letter to explain to Pamela why he’s running away from her, and when later she resents his ready engagement with his old friends the Pedders, I finally understood both Weldon’s reaction to it and also why I was having trouble grasping the book. The zeitgeist had shifted. What clearly looked fresh and shocking to a young Fay Weldon from a viewpoint of 20 years after the story appeared, looks very different to me reading it a further 60 years later, ie a full 80 years after its first release. The times have changed. – the world is a different place.And the irony of course is that this is the very point that Miles wants to make to Pamela – their minds, their intellects are creatures of different worlds. Worlds that are thirty years apart from one another in time, and because of that, irreconcilable.
    • 4/5
      In Huxley's novel an ageing writer meets his young admirer and fell in love with her. In one level it's the same story like Nabokov's Lolita.... Who's the seducer and who's the victim? Who's the predator and who's the prey? The cynical middle-aged man or the young rebellious girl? Take place in Italy in the middle of the last century, this might be an interesting read for enyone who only knows the Brave New World from Huxley...
    • 3/5
      It's very cynical, but it's also extremely well-written - for the most part. As far as 1930's literature of the Character Study variety goes, it's a great work. Unfortunately, it's also very flawed. The characters, while exceptionally well and clearly developed, are unreasonably cynical (not unreasonable in an unbelievable sense, but unreasonable in a why-should-I-care-about-these-jerks sense). And the entire last chapter (in a book with only nine chapters) is tedious and unnecessary, which kind of ruined the book for me. Up until that chapter, however, I was thoroughly enjoying the book, despite the unlikable characters, thanks to Huxley's interesting prose. The perspective wanders and flaps around seemingly at random, sometimes omniscient, but usually tied to one character, and always clear and efficient. It felt like the author was always present, almost another character, but without ever distracting from the story.I read the Hesperus "Modern Voices" edition, which I should mention because it's an Early Reviewers book. There are footnotes to translate the occasional bits of foreign languages, which is nice as the book would have been unreadable without them, but you have to flip to the end of the book minus a couple pages to read them, and the quality of the translations aren't always the best. The foreword by Fay Weldon is terrible.
    • 4/5
      I have enjoyed Aldous Huxley's works, not just the popular Brave New World, but many of his other novels and non-fiction. This is the first of his shorter works which I have read, and I found it enjoyable. He tells the story of Miles Fanning and his relationship with a much younger woman, Pamela Tarn. Their relationship constantly changes, as they each have different expectations of what this relationship means. The book contains lots of discussion about the meaning of life and love, and it is easy to see Huxley's viewpoint from his other works.
    • 3/5
      It is funny how our perceptions of writers can change with the reading of just one book. Sometimes we can be surprised, horrified or disappointed by the change, and sometimes it can be a welcome and exciting change. I have read much of Huxley’s work but After The Fireworks is something quite different from what I am used to. Previously, I have thought of Huxley as a man of science and a man of ideas. My Aldous Huxley is a writer who brings ideas about the future, society and the endless possibilities of the human mind. However, the Mr. Aldous Huxley of this book is something quite different to the one I am so fond of and feel I know so well. The narrative voice of this novella (a short read at just 135 pages) brings to mind a mix of the decadent tones of Wilde and Zola. The finely weaved conversations and subtle nuisances of language that dance around the pages create a depth to the characters that I have not found in Huxley before. The international backdrop of the novella’s desperate tragedy fixes us in Italy but is always alluding to the wider world. The language, somewhat tediously, switches from English to French, to Italian, German and even Ancient Greek. To someone not well stocked with knowledge of these languages, such as I, this can bring a slightly frustrating element to Huxley’s style. The publishers have provided ample notes for these occurrences but the fleeting back and forth from your current page to the back of the book proves more of an annoyance than anything else. However, having said that, Huxley’s relatively short work provides us with an interesting exploration of two opposing minds. The story is played out between the toing and froing of an older novelist’s inescapable desire and slightly obnoxious worldliness with the unavoidable recklessness of a younger admirer’s youth. Between large passages of dialogue and diary entries an intimate, passionate and destructive relationship plays out its inevitable drama, whose conclusion I shall not spoil. For me, this is a departure from the Aldous Huxley I am accustomed too, but nonetheless it is a wonderfully crafted work and one which I feel I shall return to again.