Eva Trout: Or Changing Scenes (Twentieth Century Classics S.) [Mass Market Paperback]

Elizabeth Bowen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1995

Eva Trout has a capacity for making trouble, attracting trouble and for spreading trouble around her. This book is the author's last completed novel which was first published in 1968.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Bowen is magnificent when she writes about conspiracy, duplicity and ambiguity, and her achievement . . . is extremely impressive." –Margaret Drabble

"[Elizabeth Bowen] is what happened after Bloomsbury . . . the link that connects Virginia Woolf with Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark." –Victoria Glendinning

"It is as though Henry James has been superimposed upon Jane Austen." –Walter Allen, The Modern Novel --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

Eva Trout, Elizabeth Bowen?s last novel, epitomizes her bold exploration of the territory between the comedy of manners and cutting social commentary.

Orphaned at a young age, Eva has found a home of sorts in Worcestershire with her former schoolteacher, Iseult Arbles, and Iseult's husband, Eric. From a safe distance in London, her legal guardian, Constantine, assumes that all's well. But Eva's flighty, romantic nature hasn't entirely clicked with the Arbles household, and Eva is plotting to escape. When she sets out to hock her Jaguar and disappear without a trace, she unwittingly leaves a paper trail for her various custodians?and all kinds of trouble?to follow. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (December 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140182985
• ISBN-13: 978-0140182989
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,636,565 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Extremely Bowenesque, December 18, 2001

By 

R. H. Mitchell "questioner" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eva Trout: Or Changing Scenes (Twentieth Century Classics S.) (Mass Market Paperback)

EVA TROUT is perhaps the weakest of Bowen's novels and is certainly not the place to start your appreciation of her work. One of Bowen's characteristic devices is to describe not the terrible event, but the day after the terrible event, as people realize that they are nonetheless going to have to pick up the pieces and continue with their lives. EVA TROUT takes this device--which may strike you as a trick but is actually one of Bowen's great insights into life as it is lived--to the greatest extreme. Except for the ending, almost every major event in this book happens between the end of one chapter and the start of the next.

If you admire Bowen as I do, it's interesting to read her at her most Bowenesque. If you do not already admire Bowen, please don't start here--I've put off too many people by recommeding this book. Start instead with her short stories, some of which are widely anthologized.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eva Trout, February 15, 2002

By 

A Ghastlycrumb Tiny (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eva Trout (Hardcover)

I think that Eva trout is Elizabeth Bowen's strongest work. It completes the feeling started in the book Death of the Heart. Who could not relate to Eva and her childish heart. Much like Portia in Death of the Heart, Eva remains unchanged as the world around her closes her in, and forces others to "grow-up", thus killing all that they believed in when children. Eva so closes herself off from the world, that she has never cried, but one can feel the verge of tears from page one on. I wont ruin the book for you by saying anything else, but i STRONGLY suggest that you read this book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Darkly Humourous, December 31, 2005

By 

A. Woodley "Patroness, Janeites, the Austen list" (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eva Trout, or Changing Scenes (Paperback)

This is the first of Bowen's novels I have read and I was quite interested in the two polarised reviews below me, one reckoned it her best, and one reckoned it her worst book. Strange how writing can be so different to so many people.

I really enjoyed it - it was darkly humourous. We are introduced to Eva Trout and her unstoppable machinations right from the start - her inability to leave things alone, and perhaps more importantly, other people's inability to get her to leave them alone. It really is enormously funny at times - a mischevious social comedy and with a nice suitably bizarre twist for the finish.