One of Kavan’s early novels, this is a fascinating period piece illuminating the peculiarities and tensions of English rural life early in the 20th century.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
British author Kavan ( Asylum Piece ), who died in 1968, originally published this splendid semi-autobiographical novel in 1941 under the pseudonym Helen Ferguson. Her luminous, arresting prose has a disarming simplicity that masks currents of strong emotion in the saga of golden-haired Celia Henzell, 17 years old as the book opens in 1912. Celia's hypochondriac mother shuns her to mourn a son who died at age 13; her oppressive father denies her the Oxford degree she craves to develop her writing talents. Coolly accepting, the girl cultivates a survivalist outlook and takes the first available escape route: marriage to a placid young engineer who whisks her to the Far East. Widowed soon afterward, Celia returns with her baby daughter Clare to England, where she falls passionately in love with handsome, generous and ardent Anthony Bonham, whose wealthy, socially pretentious relatives snub her. Becoming a successful novelist, Celia grows beautiful, desirable, diamond-hard and predatory, exploiting the Bonhams and her daughter without compunction. While her strange odyssey never ceases to enthrall, as the narrative progresses Kavan subtly shifts the center of gravity to Clare's doomed situation while Celia recedes: smiling, triumphant, commanding fear and awe. A haunting tale that unsparingly examines the emotional origins of destructive behavior.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Though she died in 1968, Kavan's excellent body of work (including Asylum Piece and Other Stories , Kesend Pub., 1980) has been intrepidly kept in print and available to U.S. readers by several small publishers. In this novel, Kavan closely examines Celia Henzell's relationships from graduation to middle age, effectively demonstrating how cold, unfeeling parenting can create a destructively amoral person. Celia marries a man she doesn't love and moves with him to the Far East to escape her family. After her daughter's birth and husband's death, she marvels that she feels nothing. This lack of concern leads to tragedy for her child and for her second husband's family, but when it comes, Celia experiences only relief. Kavan has a lovely gift for description, and her rendering of pre-World War I England is vivid and evocative. Beautifully executed and well worth the price.
- Bettie Alston Spivey, Charlotte - Mecklenburg, P.L., Charlotte, N. C.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Bettie Alston Spivey, Charlotte - Mecklenburg, P.L., Charlotte, N. C.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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