Customer Reviews

The Echoing Grove (Virago Modern Classics)

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I was introduced to this novel when I rented the recent movie The Heart of Me; while watching that lovely film, I kept thinking to myself that this had to be based on a novel as screenplays rarely have the depth of characterization and event that novels do. I was rewarded with the title "The Echoing Grove" when I read the end credits.

This novel tells the story of two sisters, one conventional and conventionally married and one a new bohemian of the lost generation who is having an affair with her sisters unhappy husband. Despite all experience to the contrary, the adulterous husband and the betraying sister are in love and attempt to pursue this love. They are thwarted by the wife with the help of her mother and tragedy ensues for all concerned.

The story is told in a series of flashbacks after WWII has ended leaving Europe and the two survivng sisters devastated as they attempt to overcome the betrayal both of them feel while bearing the losses both have sustained. Family dysfunction, sibling rivalry, thwarted romantic love, the prison of social convention, transcendent yearning, the devastation of war and the horrors that all life unleashes on its adherents and the final break with the past that the end of WWII brought are all explored in this stunning novel.

Rarely have I read a novel so insightful about every kind of personal relationship, even those random relationships that one enters when what one really wants is unavailable, and into the dynamic of happiness sought and tragedy gained.

If the writing had been less dreamy, I think this would be considered one of the great novels of the twentieth century rather than being relegated to the category of old-fashioned women's fiction. It is clear that women's writing really is suppressed when a novel of this depth is all but forgoten.

I highly recommend both the novel and the movie.

I love to read, but somehow I stumbled onto the movie version of this story first. I liked the story so much that I got the book. The book is incredibly well written from a technical standpoint, but it plodded so much that I got bored with it pretty early on. I kept wanting to get to the heart of the story, but it just took sooo long. Don't get me wrong, I like books with a lot of detail: Jane Austen, Henry James, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, etc... This book just took too long to get to the part of the story that captured my attention in the first place. I can't say whether I recommend it or not. I believe this one truly is a matter of style preference. Good luck!