Every Eye [Hardcover]

Isobel English (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 30, 2006

Isobel English, a novelist of the 1950s, wrote three brief books about adultery and damnation admired today by Muriel Spark and Beryl Bainbridge. Every Eye concerns Hattie, a woman not really at home anywhere, least of all among her manipulative family, which has assigned her the role of shabby-genteel London spinster. She has understood little about her existence, and about her strange, aborted love affair with a much older man the central mystery of her life. Now, while in Ibiza with her new young husband, the meaning of her past is becoming clear, its hidden patterns emerging from gray English shadows into the blazing Mediterranean sun. "It is in Ibiza that the story breaks free from its resentments," said Anita Brookner in praise of this remarkable neglected novel, "a lucidly written account of various kinds of confusion ... and a valuable lesson in where to look for freedom."

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

Hatty, the narrator of this exquisite 1956 novel, is a piano teacher who was born with a lazy eye. Though her vision has been repaired, a lingering feeling of isolation makes it seem that "this outward sign was only the visible proof of inward impediment." Hatty's voice on the page vividly conveys her sense of "discordancy" with others, as the action shifts between recollections of adolescence and young-adulthood in grim, gray England and her considerably cheerier present, travelling through a Technicolor Spain with a new, much younger husband. The true marvel of the novel lies in the taut interweaving of these narratives: past informing present and present recasting past. Enlightenment is kept satisfyingly in abeyance until a rapturous conclusion on a mountaintop in Ibiza.
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Review

This is writing as good as it gets. . . A beautiful, beautiful novel. Read it twice. --Debra Murphy, Catholic Fiction.net

A wonderfully idiosyncratic, compressed exploration of identity, vision, and will. --Valerie Sayers, Commonweal Magazine

Isobel English is a perfectionist, crafting aphoristic sentences as if she were doing an etching. . . Every Eye is full of paradoxes and tonal dissonances. --Ed Block, America Magazine

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 151 pages
• Publisher: David R Godine (July 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1574231995
• ISBN-13: 978-1574231991
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,876,549 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another remarkable rediscovery from Persephone, August 28, 2004

By 

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

This review is from: Every Eye (Paperback)

The editors at persephone Books in London have done a tremendous service by reissuing these terrific and beautiful editions of neglected twentieth-century women's classics; it's a true shame these books aren't more available in the United States in affordable editions. EVERY EYE is one of the most beautifully written books in their series; Isobel English's gift for narrative description (particularly for landscape and for fabrics) is superb. The story initially seems to be out of Caroline Blackwood territory, with its heroine's repeating complaints about the maternal figures in her life (particularly her aunt); but as the novel unfolds it moves far beyond that, and its deft shuttlings back between the heroine's present (her honeymoon in Ibiza) and her past seem miraculous. Cinema is one of the places where we are best used to such shifts, but there's little filmic in English's technique--her talents are thoroughly those of the novelistic. The gorgeousness of the prose and narrative drive allow you to overlook the conventionality of the very guessable "surprise ending."

0 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars not so hot, January 3, 2007

By 

demanding reader (bethlehem pa United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Every Eye (Hardcover)

i agree that the writing is good, but this novel is not that interesting and is certainly not compelling. maybe i have outgrown this "anita brookner"-type of novel?