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Available
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Collection
Publication
NYRB Classics (2012), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 328 pages
Description
During those summer games of hide-and-seek Harriet falls in love with Vesey and his elusive, teasing ways. When he goes to Oxford she cherishes his photograph and waits for the letter which doesn't come. Then Charles enters her life, a solid and reliable solicitor, and Harriet stifles her imaginings. With Charles and their daughter, she excels at respectability: its crimson-papered walls, remembered birthdays and jars of lilac. But when Vesey reappears, her marriage seems to melt into nothing. Harriet is older, it is much too late, but she is still in love with him. First published in 1958, this is Elizabeth Taylor's subtlest and finest work.
Media reviews
A Game of Hide and Seek, with its iterative structure (Harriet and Vesey meeting again and again, and always thwarted), heartbreaking ending, and subtle but unmistakable gender politics, is one of Taylor’s best two or three novels
Taylor's forte as an author is acute observation and the devastating precision of her understated prose. Her brilliance is particularly evident in this, her fifth novel, set in her familiar milieu of middle-class married couples whose unfulfilled lives are crisscrossed with unspoken tension and
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stifled ardour. Show Less
A shaded, subtle recording of lonely lives which find no real contact- or comfort-with each other (Charles, awkward and ill at ease when the memory of Vesey obtrudes; Vesey, whose self-love knows little concern for others; Caroline lost in her youthful illusions) the insights here are finedrawn,
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the conclusions inescapable. For her audience- which is established if selective. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member lauralkeet
Harriet and Vesey grew up together as playmates and friends. One summer while caring for Vesey's cousins, they realize their affection has blossomed into something more:
'I cannot put down what happened this evening,' she wrote mysteriously. 'Nor is there any need, for I shall remember all my life.'
But Vesey goes off to Oxford and Harriet remains at home. She picks up tidbits of news from his aunt and uncle, but they lose touch and eventually Harriet makes her own way. She finds a job in a gown shop, marries Charles, a respected business man, and they have a daughter, Betsy. Harriet thinks of Vesey often, but for the most part she is a reasonably happy wife and mother.
Until one day, nearly 20 years later, when Harriet and Vesey run into each other at a dance. Dancing with Vesey, Harriet is overcome with memories and emotion. They do not see each other often -- Vesey is in the theatre, and travels around the country -- but they exchange letters and find reasons to meet anytime he is nearby. Charles feels Harriet's distance, but can neither draw her out nor express his own feelings. The strain rubs off on Betsy, too. Even though Harriet sees how differently people respond to her, she desperately wants to believe they're fine. It's just her, responding differently to them.
Taylor's writing is exquisite. The story unfolds very slowly, with the rich observational detail Taylor is known for. And it's emotionally intense as well. In the first part, the reader feels the pain of young love -- we want Harriet and Vesey to accept the love they feel for each other, and live happily ever after. We feel pain in the awkwardness of their parting, and the pain returns when they meet again in middle age. By that time, I had come to appreciate her marriage to Charles. I was caught up in Harriet's dilemma, simultaneously wishing for things that might have been, and wanting to maintain the comfort and security of her family life. The ending is ambiguous, and yet felt completely right.
In her biography, The Other Elizabeth Taylor, Nicola Beauman called this "Elizabeth's most flawless, most nearly perfect novel." I couldn't agree more.
'I cannot put down what happened this evening,' she wrote mysteriously. 'Nor is there any need, for I shall remember all my life.'
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And, although she was so mysterious, she was right. Much in those diaries would puzzle her when she turned their pages in middle age, old age; many allusions would be meaningless; week after week would seem to have been wiped away; but that one entry, so proudly cryptic, would always evoke the evening in the woods, the shadows, the layers of leaves shutting out the sky, the bronze mosses at the of the trees, the floating sound their voices had, and that explosive, echoing cry of the cuckoo. (p.21-22)But Vesey goes off to Oxford and Harriet remains at home. She picks up tidbits of news from his aunt and uncle, but they lose touch and eventually Harriet makes her own way. She finds a job in a gown shop, marries Charles, a respected business man, and they have a daughter, Betsy. Harriet thinks of Vesey often, but for the most part she is a reasonably happy wife and mother.
Until one day, nearly 20 years later, when Harriet and Vesey run into each other at a dance. Dancing with Vesey, Harriet is overcome with memories and emotion. They do not see each other often -- Vesey is in the theatre, and travels around the country -- but they exchange letters and find reasons to meet anytime he is nearby. Charles feels Harriet's distance, but can neither draw her out nor express his own feelings. The strain rubs off on Betsy, too. Even though Harriet sees how differently people respond to her, she desperately wants to believe they're fine. It's just her, responding differently to them.
Taylor's writing is exquisite. The story unfolds very slowly, with the rich observational detail Taylor is known for. And it's emotionally intense as well. In the first part, the reader feels the pain of young love -- we want Harriet and Vesey to accept the love they feel for each other, and live happily ever after. We feel pain in the awkwardness of their parting, and the pain returns when they meet again in middle age. By that time, I had come to appreciate her marriage to Charles. I was caught up in Harriet's dilemma, simultaneously wishing for things that might have been, and wanting to maintain the comfort and security of her family life. The ending is ambiguous, and yet felt completely right.
In her biography, The Other Elizabeth Taylor, Nicola Beauman called this "Elizabeth's most flawless, most nearly perfect novel." I couldn't agree more.
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LibraryThing member DieFledermaus
Harriet has known Vesey, the nephew of her mother’s best friend, since childhood, but one summer friendship turns to love. The course of true love does not run smooth – not only due to circumstances (Vesey eventually goes off to university) but due to Vesey’s personality, a mix of affected
Taylor’s prose is wonderfully sharp and the characters and setting are vividly portrayed. The book is short but even the side characters are sharply delineated. Harriet’s mother, Lilian, Caroline - Vesey’s aunt, Betsy’s teacher and Charles’s mother are only briefly in the book but are strong and interesting characters. The relationship between Harriet and Lilian is also well done, with Lilian’s disappointment and Harriet’s inability to communicate creating a wide gulf between them, as in this quote -
“Harriet’s own diary, which had no lock and key, would have told her mother all she did not want to know…Harriet had not described her love in writing; but Vesey’s most trivial doing or saying, crammed up and down the margins, obliterating headings about Pheasant Shooting and the Phases of the Moon, would have plainly revealed to her mother the pitiful and one-sided truth.”
Vesey is not the most appealing character but in a couple of quick strokes, Taylor shows why he cares for the seemingly dull Harriet. She’s badly hurt by his sarcasms but he usually manages to make it up to her. One imagines that others in his life would not be so tolerant and that his ability to form long-term relationships would be impaired.
The title is initially seen in the charged game of hide and seek that Harriet and Vesey play with his cousins, where the pair hides together though nothing happens except a meaningful silence. Later, of course, it refers to their parting and meeting over the years and the relationship that they carry on after Vesey comes back. But it is also their own retreats and tentative steps during that last summer, and the hidden side of them both – their intense connection – behind the façade of the dully dutiful housewife and the careless, unsuccessful actor.
This is a very good book but I found it hard to concentrate unless I had a good chunk of reading time and was relatively unstressed. When I was in the right mood, though, the book was absolutely captivating.
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carelessness and cruelty, and Harriet’s shyness and passivity. Harriet is devastated when he leaves. Eventually, she finds employment as a shopgirl and meets the solid and upstanding Charles, who loves her even though he knows about Vesey. After years of marriage to Charles and a teenage daughter, Betsy, Harriet encounters Vesey again. She is thrown into confusion and uncertainty while Charles clumsily tries to prove he’s the better man, Betsy is strongly affected by discovering her mother’s past, and friends and relatives attempt to meddle. Through this, Harriet is only certain of one thing: her unshakeable love of Vesey.Taylor’s prose is wonderfully sharp and the characters and setting are vividly portrayed. The book is short but even the side characters are sharply delineated. Harriet’s mother, Lilian, Caroline - Vesey’s aunt, Betsy’s teacher and Charles’s mother are only briefly in the book but are strong and interesting characters. The relationship between Harriet and Lilian is also well done, with Lilian’s disappointment and Harriet’s inability to communicate creating a wide gulf between them, as in this quote -
“Harriet’s own diary, which had no lock and key, would have told her mother all she did not want to know…Harriet had not described her love in writing; but Vesey’s most trivial doing or saying, crammed up and down the margins, obliterating headings about Pheasant Shooting and the Phases of the Moon, would have plainly revealed to her mother the pitiful and one-sided truth.”
Vesey is not the most appealing character but in a couple of quick strokes, Taylor shows why he cares for the seemingly dull Harriet. She’s badly hurt by his sarcasms but he usually manages to make it up to her. One imagines that others in his life would not be so tolerant and that his ability to form long-term relationships would be impaired.
The title is initially seen in the charged game of hide and seek that Harriet and Vesey play with his cousins, where the pair hides together though nothing happens except a meaningful silence. Later, of course, it refers to their parting and meeting over the years and the relationship that they carry on after Vesey comes back. But it is also their own retreats and tentative steps during that last summer, and the hidden side of them both – their intense connection – behind the façade of the dully dutiful housewife and the careless, unsuccessful actor.
This is a very good book but I found it hard to concentrate unless I had a good chunk of reading time and was relatively unstressed. When I was in the right mood, though, the book was absolutely captivating.
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LibraryThing member thorold
This seems to be one of Taylor's best-known novels. Superficially it's a reworking of the plot of Brief encounter - a happily-married woman finds she's desperately in love with Another Man. Taylor clearly enjoys planting a string of tongue-in-cheek references to the recent film in the text to show
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us that she's well aware of this overlap - and incidentally diverting any suspicion that there might have been such a situation in her own life (as we now know there was). But if it's Brief encounter, then it's Brief encounter as it would have been if they'd got E.M. Forster to do it instead of Noel Coward. There are all kinds of extra layers of frustration and miscommunication (especially between generations) going on alongside the main storyline, there is more ambiguity than you can shake a stick at, and there's a gloriously undefined ending where you have to decide for yourself how it all might have worked out. And of course a whole lot of wonderfully subversive lines, and some absolutely beautiful set-piece scenes. There may be a few bits of the book that feel like pastiche Forster, but then you get something like the scene in the café with the pork chops and you think "only Taylor could have written this". Show Less
LibraryThing member LyzzyBee
(30 March 1994)
A re-read, but as it was originally read in 1994, I didn’t remember much, except one character reminded me of someone I knew – and they still did remind me of that person (who I still know, although not so closely!) when I read it this time round. A poignant tale of first, lost
A re-read, but as it was originally read in 1994, I didn’t remember much, except one character reminded me of someone I knew – and they still did remind me of that person (who I still know, although not so closely!) when I read it this time round. A poignant tale of first, lost
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love and what happens when you “settle” but then that love comes back to get you. Marvellous cameos from the rather tragic figure of Kitty, and the shop ladies in their little feminine enclave of soup and waxing. There were some excellent mothers, too, as usual in Taylor – I adored Charles’ theatrical mother, all gestures and faces. Most poignant of all was a little meditation of the loss of an old friend in middle age. In fact, looking back at the book from a few days’ distance, all kinds of love are included here: for a son; for a mother; lost; rekindled; friendship; colleagues; pashes on teachers. Mature, devastating and mysterious of ending – a marvellous read. Show Less
LibraryThing member Smiler69
I've been hearing a lot about Elizabeth Taylor this year and have read many glowing reviews about her other books, so couldn't wait to plunge into this one to see what the fuss was about. Unfortunately, I was quickly disappointed by this story about Harriet and Vesey, who've known each other since
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they were children and playmates and have never forgotten their first, painfully awkward embrace. Vesey has always been slightly cruel to Harriet, but she has been unaccountably infatuated with him from the first. Still, his university studies take him away from her, and life must go on. Year later, Harriet is now married to a much older man who venerates her. Together they have a teenage daughter, and they all live a comfortable life in a prettily decorated suburban home. But Harriet still can't stop thinking of Vesey, Vesey who became an actor hoping for fame and glory, but has only managed to find small parts in mediocre theatre productions and lives hand to mouth in dismal and shabby flats. When Vesey comes to town on tour, Harriet can't resist getting together with him and their pathetic romance picks up where they've left off. Her daughter has also formed a strange attachment to Vesey and surreptitiously reads all their communications, and her husband suspects her frequent outings aren't as innocent as she claims, but like a moth to a flame, Harriet can't stay away from her lover. I found the story sad and pathetic and couldn't bring myself to care for any of the characters, least of all for this deplorable pair. I was tempted to give up from the very first pages, but soldiered on, only because of all the wonderful things I'd seen written about Taylor's great talent. While it's true she writes beautifully and creates credible characters, forcing myself to finish this book was a slow and agonizing process and the best part was getting to the last page, albeit the ending was bleak and left me mostly perplexed. Still, I haven't given up hope and look forward to reading more of her work, perhaps encouraged by the fact that even one of Taylor's greatest fans allowed that she couldn't find it in her to finish this book... a sure sign that this author was capable of writing much more captivating fare. Show Less
LibraryThing member rmckeown
The next installment in my exploration of the works of Elizabeth Taylor -- the British writer, not the lovely American actress – is A Game of Hide and Seek. Kingsley Amis. Antonio Fraser, Hillary Mantel – among others -- tout her works as among the best of the 20th century. The more of her
This novel reminds me of 19th century novelists, such as Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell. The narrative is understated with detailed probes into the psyche of Harriet. In the “Introduction” by Caleb Crain, he wrote, “Perhaps A Game of Hide and Seek should be understood in the spirit of a Brontë novel, as representing a world in which love is more easily distinguished by the shadows it throws than by any light it may cast” (xi).
I found myself enchanted from the first page. Taylor wrote, “Sometimes in the long summer’s evenings, which are so marked a part of our youth, Harriet and Vesey played hide-and-seek with the younger children, running across the tufted meadows, their shoes yellow with the pollen of butter cups. They could not run fast across those uneven fields; nor did they wish to, since to find the hiding children was to lose their time together, to run faster was to run away from one another. The jog-trot was a game devised from shyness and uncertainty. Neither dared to assume the other wished to pause, and inexperience barred them both from testing this” (3). I am fast becoming an avid admirer of this wonderful writer; however, collecting her 12 novels, 8 short story collections, and a children’s book, will be a daunting task – I only own two novels and a short story collection. That is what retirement will be all about to my mind.
Here is an example of Harriet’s musings. Taylor wrote, “After their walk in the woods, Harriet faced the day’s page uncertainly. There was either far too much space or only one hundredth part enough. Time had expanded and contracted abnormally. That morning and all her childhood seemed the same distance away. ‘I cannot put down what happened this evening,’ she wrote mysteriously. ‘Nor is there any need, for I shall remember all my life.’ And, although she was so mysterious, she was right. Much of those diaries would puzzle her when she turned their pages in middle age, old age; many allusions would be meaningless; week after week would seem to have been wiped away: but that one entry, so proudly cryptic, would always evoke the evening in the woods, the shadows, the layers of leaves shutting out the sky, the bronze mosses at the foot of the trees, the floating sound their voices had, and that explosive, echoing cry of the cuckoo. She would remember writing the words in the little candlelit bedroom” (26-27).
To give Vesey his due, Taylor adds, “He needed Harriet for his own reasons, to give him confidence and peace. In the shelter of her love, he hoped to have a second chance, to turn his personality away from what he most hated in himself, to try to find dignity before it was too late. Playing the fool bored him. With the failure of school behind him, he hoped to shake off the tedious habit” (30).
Some of Taylor’s works are available from the The New York Review of Books. try Elizabeth Taylor’s A Game of Hide and Seek, and find the wonderful world of her imagination, and then help revive interest in this amazing writer. 5 stars.
--Jim, 12/11/16
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works I read, the more I side with these opinions. It is a curious story of a two teenagers who form a deep and innocent bond. However, their paths take them in different directions, and it becomes anything but a children’s summer diversion. This novel reminds me of 19th century novelists, such as Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell. The narrative is understated with detailed probes into the psyche of Harriet. In the “Introduction” by Caleb Crain, he wrote, “Perhaps A Game of Hide and Seek should be understood in the spirit of a Brontë novel, as representing a world in which love is more easily distinguished by the shadows it throws than by any light it may cast” (xi).
I found myself enchanted from the first page. Taylor wrote, “Sometimes in the long summer’s evenings, which are so marked a part of our youth, Harriet and Vesey played hide-and-seek with the younger children, running across the tufted meadows, their shoes yellow with the pollen of butter cups. They could not run fast across those uneven fields; nor did they wish to, since to find the hiding children was to lose their time together, to run faster was to run away from one another. The jog-trot was a game devised from shyness and uncertainty. Neither dared to assume the other wished to pause, and inexperience barred them both from testing this” (3). I am fast becoming an avid admirer of this wonderful writer; however, collecting her 12 novels, 8 short story collections, and a children’s book, will be a daunting task – I only own two novels and a short story collection. That is what retirement will be all about to my mind.
Here is an example of Harriet’s musings. Taylor wrote, “After their walk in the woods, Harriet faced the day’s page uncertainly. There was either far too much space or only one hundredth part enough. Time had expanded and contracted abnormally. That morning and all her childhood seemed the same distance away. ‘I cannot put down what happened this evening,’ she wrote mysteriously. ‘Nor is there any need, for I shall remember all my life.’ And, although she was so mysterious, she was right. Much of those diaries would puzzle her when she turned their pages in middle age, old age; many allusions would be meaningless; week after week would seem to have been wiped away: but that one entry, so proudly cryptic, would always evoke the evening in the woods, the shadows, the layers of leaves shutting out the sky, the bronze mosses at the foot of the trees, the floating sound their voices had, and that explosive, echoing cry of the cuckoo. She would remember writing the words in the little candlelit bedroom” (26-27).
To give Vesey his due, Taylor adds, “He needed Harriet for his own reasons, to give him confidence and peace. In the shelter of her love, he hoped to have a second chance, to turn his personality away from what he most hated in himself, to try to find dignity before it was too late. Playing the fool bored him. With the failure of school behind him, he hoped to shake off the tedious habit” (30).
Some of Taylor’s works are available from the The New York Review of Books. try Elizabeth Taylor’s A Game of Hide and Seek, and find the wonderful world of her imagination, and then help revive interest in this amazing writer. 5 stars.
--Jim, 12/11/16
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LibraryThing member Sarahursula
Feminists’ daughters should be brave and true, although the reality is often not at all like that and lionesses can have wimpy little cubs. Elizabeth Taylor’s subtle A Game of Hide and Seek tells the poignant story of not-so-brave Harriet (bored by her mother’s generation and its fight for
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the vote) and her love for the glamorous young Vesey. It’s a classic tale of a girl who never gets over her first love and the power he still has over her despite the failure of all his hopes and ambitions. Harriet has suburbia and Vesey horrible rooms and poor health. Although fairly happily married and with a daughter of her own, Harriet is still in thrall to the down at heel Vesey who returns to her life and, with their sad and fitful grasping of happiness, he continues to exert a powerful influence over all their lives. Show Less
LibraryThing member Brennagh
I am always amazed at how well Elizabeth Taylor depicts the details of domestic life. With a few deft strokes she conjures up characters and place. Incredibly overlooked in her time, she has been recognized by many younger writers and Virago Modern Classics continues to reprint her books. In
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addition to this story of the repercussions of a second chance at love, I highly recommend Palladian, In a Summer Season, At Mrs. Lippincote's and a View from the Harbor. Show Less
LibraryThing member oldblack
As seems to be the norm for Elizabeth Taylor's books, this one took me a while to get into it. In fact, at about page 35 I seriously considered returning it straight to the library. I decided, however, to be generous in my application of the Nancy Pearl rule, and I'm glad I did that. It turned out
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quite well in the end. Sure, it's a little bit quaint, in an early 20th century English sort of way, but I can take a certain amount of that. Taylor seems to me to be very good at drawing characters and relationships in a way that transcends the era in which the stories are set. Show Less
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Hide and Seek is a novel of passion and star-crossed love. It begins with two teenagers, Harriet and Vesey. Harriet is a timid girl and Vesey, while also shy, is prone to outbursts of malice that may be found in episodes like his excessive teasing of the housekeeper. Vesey dreams of writing great
The second part of the novel begins sixteen years later. Harriet has a teenage-daughter, Betsy, and is in a pleasant if somewhat passionless marriage when Vesey returns. She has spent the time attempting to make up for not loving her husband through feverish housekeeping: “When she married Charles, she had seemed to wed also a social order. A convert to it, and to provincial life, and keeping house, she had pursued it fanatically and as if she feared censure.” Vesey, meanwhile, is a failing actor, playing Laertes in gaudy productions of Hamlet. When they reconnect, his old cruel arrogance has been dissolved by time and misfortune, and Harriet begins risking her hard-won, if deadening, stability to meet him in sordid railway cafes and on park benches. They both feel, as Vesey puts it to himself, the “desire to unpack his life in her presence, to lay before her treasure after treasure (or, rather, loss, laughter, disappointment).” On the home front Charles finds that, "As his relations with other people improved, his life with Harriet deteriorated." Unfortunately Betsy discovers hints of the affair and her life, which was much more promising than her mother's at the same age, begins to unravel. Any imagined possibilities for Harriet and Vesey as a reunited couple also begin to come apart. The ending is ambiguous but did not disappoint in being so.
What impressed me was the characterization which brought the main players alive but made the supporting roles, like Harriet's mother, Vesey's Uncle Hugo, and Betsy's drama teacher, interesting as well. Taylor's prose reminded me of Anita Brookner or Barbara Pym in its lucid smoothness. The combination of psychological insight and great prose makes this a memorable novel from a British author who should be better known.
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literature and has the mind to make that possible while Harriet's dreams are somewhat less. She is unambitious and both her desire and her mind fail her when necessary to pass the exams for entrance to university. Vesey is dramatic and manipulative, an overcompensation for the haphazard affections of his self-centered mother. In their teens, playing complicated games with the younger cousins Harriet is meant to be babysitting, the two fall in love; on Harriet’s end, swooningly and awkwardly. The first part of Hide and Seek is all about the games they play. Harriet's developing passion for Vesey and her own sexual awakening elicit a response from Vesey, but his mood swings and a penchant for the dramatic combined with a manipulative manner that seems like indifference is painful for Harriet. The two are splintered both by their own flaws—Vesey’s insensitivity, Harriet’s inability to openly stake a claim—and by the ungenerous interventions of their elders. Vesey is packed off to university, while Harriet starts a new job in a gown shop and falls into a relationship with Charles Jephcott, “an elderly man of about thirty-five,” out of passivity and loneliness. After Vesey stands her up at a dance—and after her mother dies, and Charles tends her through her grief—Harriet submits to marrying Charles.The second part of the novel begins sixteen years later. Harriet has a teenage-daughter, Betsy, and is in a pleasant if somewhat passionless marriage when Vesey returns. She has spent the time attempting to make up for not loving her husband through feverish housekeeping: “When she married Charles, she had seemed to wed also a social order. A convert to it, and to provincial life, and keeping house, she had pursued it fanatically and as if she feared censure.” Vesey, meanwhile, is a failing actor, playing Laertes in gaudy productions of Hamlet. When they reconnect, his old cruel arrogance has been dissolved by time and misfortune, and Harriet begins risking her hard-won, if deadening, stability to meet him in sordid railway cafes and on park benches. They both feel, as Vesey puts it to himself, the “desire to unpack his life in her presence, to lay before her treasure after treasure (or, rather, loss, laughter, disappointment).” On the home front Charles finds that, "As his relations with other people improved, his life with Harriet deteriorated." Unfortunately Betsy discovers hints of the affair and her life, which was much more promising than her mother's at the same age, begins to unravel. Any imagined possibilities for Harriet and Vesey as a reunited couple also begin to come apart. The ending is ambiguous but did not disappoint in being so.
What impressed me was the characterization which brought the main players alive but made the supporting roles, like Harriet's mother, Vesey's Uncle Hugo, and Betsy's drama teacher, interesting as well. Taylor's prose reminded me of Anita Brookner or Barbara Pym in its lucid smoothness. The combination of psychological insight and great prose makes this a memorable novel from a British author who should be better known.
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LibraryThing member baswood
Picking a year: just over halfway through the 20th century (1951) and reading as many publications in that year as possible, has introduced me to many authors that I would not otherwise have sat down with. Elizabeth Taylor's; A Game of Hiding Seek was a surprise and a delight to me, almost from the
The plot is a simple one; describing a love affair almost a love infatuation from the point of view of Harriet. She and Vesey spend many of their summer school holidays together in their native England as children and then as young adolescents during the period between the two great wars. Their families were closely connected, but it was Vesey who came to stay with Harriet until their fifteenth year, when Harriet's mother decided that is was no longer a suitable arrangement. Vesey was a difficult schoolboy, a little out of step with his compatriots. He did not make friends easily, he could be a little spiteful and did not settle down to work at his studies. Harriet seems to have been just the opposite, but she fell in love with Vesey, who was always inclined to do something to upset the grown ups. Harriet loses contact with Vesey and in her twentieth year marries Charles a well set up man, some fifteen years older than herself. She can never quite forget her first feelings for Vesey although happily married to Charles. She has caught sight of Vesey once or twice at formal family gatherings, but it is 20 years later when she has her own fifteen year old daughter that Vesey intrudes into her life and so starts the second part of the novel and where Taylor's writing really takes off.
The manners and mores of English country life is brought vividly to life by Taylor. Harriet is conscious of fitting in, she has made a good marriage from a financial point of view and buckles down to making Charles as happy as she can. Harriet's mother was a suffragette and had been imprisoned, but to Harriet this seems like another lifetime and not hers. She works hard for her husband and her family, but still cannot forget Vesey. The subject of the book is a love affair, the sort of affair that many readers at the time would have been able to identify/sympathise with: that love affair that seems to fly in the face of all that is comfortable and expected, a love so deep that cannot be forgotten and springs back into life sometimes quite unexpectedly. Taylor does not pass any judgements on her characters, she lets their lives flow just edging their story along in a way that really does feel quite natural.
This is not a modern forward looking novel, it seems steeped in the times in which it was written, remembering that the first part of the book covers a period between the wars. In the early 1950's middle class people still had servants or companions, fitting in, getting back to some sort of normality after the war, was what many people wanted. Taylor captures this atmosphere perfectly for me and I was entranced by some of her writing and her characters and so a 4.5 star read.
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first page. It was her fifth novel; she had first been published in 1945 and so was well into her stride by 1951. The subject matter and the quality of her writing style of this novel would appear to be typical of her work. She writes about the middle class, she writes about England particularly the countryside and she writes about relationships from a woman's point of view, all this I gathered from a sympathetic introduction by Elizabeth Jane Howard on my kindle edition.The plot is a simple one; describing a love affair almost a love infatuation from the point of view of Harriet. She and Vesey spend many of their summer school holidays together in their native England as children and then as young adolescents during the period between the two great wars. Their families were closely connected, but it was Vesey who came to stay with Harriet until their fifteenth year, when Harriet's mother decided that is was no longer a suitable arrangement. Vesey was a difficult schoolboy, a little out of step with his compatriots. He did not make friends easily, he could be a little spiteful and did not settle down to work at his studies. Harriet seems to have been just the opposite, but she fell in love with Vesey, who was always inclined to do something to upset the grown ups. Harriet loses contact with Vesey and in her twentieth year marries Charles a well set up man, some fifteen years older than herself. She can never quite forget her first feelings for Vesey although happily married to Charles. She has caught sight of Vesey once or twice at formal family gatherings, but it is 20 years later when she has her own fifteen year old daughter that Vesey intrudes into her life and so starts the second part of the novel and where Taylor's writing really takes off.
The manners and mores of English country life is brought vividly to life by Taylor. Harriet is conscious of fitting in, she has made a good marriage from a financial point of view and buckles down to making Charles as happy as she can. Harriet's mother was a suffragette and had been imprisoned, but to Harriet this seems like another lifetime and not hers. She works hard for her husband and her family, but still cannot forget Vesey. The subject of the book is a love affair, the sort of affair that many readers at the time would have been able to identify/sympathise with: that love affair that seems to fly in the face of all that is comfortable and expected, a love so deep that cannot be forgotten and springs back into life sometimes quite unexpectedly. Taylor does not pass any judgements on her characters, she lets their lives flow just edging their story along in a way that really does feel quite natural.
This is not a modern forward looking novel, it seems steeped in the times in which it was written, remembering that the first part of the book covers a period between the wars. In the early 1950's middle class people still had servants or companions, fitting in, getting back to some sort of normality after the war, was what many people wanted. Taylor captures this atmosphere perfectly for me and I was entranced by some of her writing and her characters and so a 4.5 star read.
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LibraryThing member mahallett
i didn't like this as much as the other 2 i have read. nobody was very likeable. nobody i could identify with. but it takes courage to write a story like this although i don't quite know why harriet seems so unattractive.
LibraryThing member michaelbartley
a two part book, the first part is the friendship and relationship of Harriet and Vesey as teenagers. they are in love but aren't able to express or experience it. both very emotionally imature. the second part is there relationship in middle age. Harriet is married, not a bad marriage but one that
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lacks passion. Vesey, is a struggling actor, he re enters her life. it is very sad at the end, actually there is very little joy in this book Show Less
Awards
The New York Times Notable Books of the Year (Fiction — 1951)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1951
Physical description
328 p.; 5.03 inches
ISBN
1590174968 / 9781590174968