Author: | Elizabeth Taylor | ISBN: | 9780748131648 |
Publisher: | Little, Brown Book Group | Publication: | September 29, 2011 |
Imprint: | Virago | Language: | English |
Author: | Elizabeth Taylor |
ISBN: | 9780748131648 |
Publisher: | Little, Brown Book Group |
Publication: | September 29, 2011 |
Imprint: | Virago |
Language: | English |
Elizabeth Taylor's darkest novel . . . She writes with a sensuous richness of language that draws the reader down the most shadowy paths . . . Extremely beguiling. Taylor makes the living moment present, touchable, disturbing, enchanting - Helen Dunmore
*
Spending the holiday with friends, as she has for many years, Camilla finds that their private absorptions - Frances with her painting and Liz with her baby - seem to exclude her from the gossipy intimacies of previous summers. Anxious that she will remain encased in her solitary life as a school secretary, and perhaps to spite of her friends, Camilla steps into an unlikely liaison with Richard Elton, a handsome, assured - and dangerous - liar.
Elizabeth Taylor's darkest novel is a skillful exploration of the danger we'll go to to avoid loneliness. Taylor is increasingly recognised as one of the best writers of the twentieth century, and this little-known novel displays her range admirably.
*
'Her stories remain with one, indelibly, as though they had been some turning-point in one's own experience' - Elizabeth Bowen
'Always intelligent, often subversive and never dull, Elizabeth Taylor is the thinking person's dangerous housewife. Her sophisticated prose combines elegance, icy wit and freshness in a stimulating cocktail' - Valerie Martin
'A magnificent and underrated mid-20th-century writer, the missing link between Jane Austen and John Updike' - David Baddiel, Independent
Elizabeth Taylor's darkest novel . . . She writes with a sensuous richness of language that draws the reader down the most shadowy paths . . . Extremely beguiling. Taylor makes the living moment present, touchable, disturbing, enchanting - Helen Dunmore
*
Spending the holiday with friends, as she has for many years, Camilla finds that their private absorptions - Frances with her painting and Liz with her baby - seem to exclude her from the gossipy intimacies of previous summers. Anxious that she will remain encased in her solitary life as a school secretary, and perhaps to spite of her friends, Camilla steps into an unlikely liaison with Richard Elton, a handsome, assured - and dangerous - liar.
Elizabeth Taylor's darkest novel is a skillful exploration of the danger we'll go to to avoid loneliness. Taylor is increasingly recognised as one of the best writers of the twentieth century, and this little-known novel displays her range admirably.
*
'Her stories remain with one, indelibly, as though they had been some turning-point in one's own experience' - Elizabeth Bowen
'Always intelligent, often subversive and never dull, Elizabeth Taylor is the thinking person's dangerous housewife. Her sophisticated prose combines elegance, icy wit and freshness in a stimulating cocktail' - Valerie Martin
'A magnificent and underrated mid-20th-century writer, the missing link between Jane Austen and John Updike' - David Baddiel, Independent