Eustace & Hilda a Trilogy [Paperback]

L P Hartley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1979

The three books gathered together as Eustace and Hilda explore a brother and sister's lifelong relationship. Hilda, the older child, is both self-sacrificing and domineering, as puritanical as she is gorgeous; Eustace is a gentle, dreamy, pleasure-loving boy: the two siblings could hardly be more different, but they are also deeply devoted. And yet as Eustace and Hilda grow up and seek to go their separate ways in a world of power and position, money and love, their relationship is marked by increasing pain.

L. P. Hartley's much-loved novel, the magnum opus of one of twentieth-century England's best writers, is a complex and spellbinding work: a comedy of upper-class manners; a study in the subtlest nuances of feeling; a poignant reckoning with the ironies of character and fate. Above all, it is about two people who cannot live together or apart, about the ties that bind—and break.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The combined effect of these three books is one of mounting excellence. Eustace, the central figure, is an immortal portrayal of the delights and agonies of childhood and adolescence. I cannot but envy the author of these books. He must feel immensely satisfied to have written a social novel which is in the class of George Meredith. He is a mature and rich writer, his gift for narrative balancing nicely with his other gifts of description and dialogue.
— John Betjeman --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

L.P. Hartley (1895–1972), the son of the director of a brickworks, attended Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford, before setting out on a career as a literary critic and writer of short stories. In 1944 he published his first novel, The Shrimp and the Anemone, the opening volume of the trilogy Eustace and Hilda. In the spring of 1952, Hartley began The Go-Between, a novel strongly rooted in his childhood. By October he had already completed the first draft, and the finished product was published in early 1953. The Go-Between became an immediate critical and popular success and has long been considered Hartley’s finest book. His many other novels include Facial Justice, The Hireling, and The Love-Adept.

Anita Brookner is an art historian and novelist. She lives in London. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 736 pages
• Publisher: Faber and Faber Limited (October 1, 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571114024
• ISBN-13: 978-0571114023
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,722,749 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece..., October 19, 2001

By 

Sathyanarayanan Sekar "a book worm" (Bangalore, India) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eustace and Hilda: A Trilogy (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

Certainly the most complicated and complex set of charcters in literature. And that THE charcters count up to only two only serves to underline the essence of the book. The trilogy is basically an exploration of releationship between a very unforthcoming and rather narcisstic Eustace and the domineering Hilda. "Shrimp and the anemone" starts off the tale from their childhood and culminates with "Eustace and Hilda". Both are certainly doomed to disappointments - neither can look beyond the other. For all Hilda's success at the hospital, it is Eustace's guardian that she sees herself - moral as well as the economic guardian.
One never senses any feeling in Eustace to escape this bond.Rather he is as much a slave to Hilda as she wills all to be. As the story progresses towards an intriguing climax, the tables are turned as Hilda now becomes dependant on Eustace for her medication. Eustace gears up to it gamefully - and it is reeally the final chapters of the book which explore the relationship at a direct level.
All in all, it is a wondferful read. Recommended for those who love words and who do not mind a leisurely pace. A masterpiece !

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Unexpected Pleasure, January 31, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Eustace and Hilda: A Trilogy (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

I cannot imagine how I manged to go through college, a graduate program in English, and many years of teaching British literature without ever having read this book. The character development is excellent, and even when the characters are being aggravating (as they sometimes are), the reader truly cares about them and wants to see what happens next. I highly recommend this book to all fans of the well-crafted British novel. Furthermore, I recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in the ways, both healthy and unhealthy, that siblings interact.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A deeply flawed, deeply interesting work, September 18, 2001

By 

Jay Dickson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Eustace and Hilda: A Trilogy (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

Anita Brookner refers to this trilogy in her introduction to the NYRB edition as "a masterpiece," and it is quite clear from reading it that L.P. Hartley intended this as his artist's summa. The works are not as well known, however, as Hartley's THE GO-BETWEEN, and I think there is a reason for that: although the acccomplishments of the EUSTACE AND HILDA trilogy are genuine, it is not as polished a work as THE GO-BETWEEN. The principle problem with the trilogy is that almost all of the characters (including Hilda) exist only as they are perceived by the timid, pleasure-loving, and deeply narcissistic Eustace: thus they do not wholly "live" for us, and though Eustace himself seems quite real, he is so very sensitive that (to paraphrase Christopher Durang) you'd like to hit him. Eustace's fascination with the wealthy and with luxury inevitably bring to mind Marcel Proust, who clearly seems a model for Hartley's trilogy. The trilogy also seems modelled on Galsworthy and Meredith, however, and at times it makes for a very strange melange. It does have some fantastic set pieces, however, including Hilda's trip in the airplane with Dick Staveley and her later breakdown and its aftermath.