Alice's Masque - Lindsay Clarke

This was a somewhat random purchase in a booksale, a strategy that occasionally yields riches but sadly not this time. Clarke's novel is aiming for a king of D.H. Lawrence English mysticism drawing on Arthurian legend, but the allegory is dull while the "real world" sections are plain daft, especially some of the ludicrous dialogue. I also found the books underlying assumption of a fundamentally antagonistic relationship between the sexes, with an inevitable aspect of violence from the male "side", both absurd and offensive.