Customer Reviews

The Tortoise and the Hare (Virago Modern Classics)

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How does this book not have more reviews? I found it through the 2010 PBS summer reading list and it was absolutely enchanting. I couldn't put it down. As a short description, I'd say it's like a 1950's version of a Jane Austen novel - uppercrust English society, beautiful prose, absorbing conversations, and descriptions of the English countryside. The images and scenes of the book stay with you long after you've put it down. Aside from that, it's also a moving story about a troubled marriage, and the gender roles of the mid-1950's that made men and women much more unalike than need be.

This is an elegantly written, albeit slowly paced book. It tells the story of a fastidious wife and indifferent mother whose life revolves around pleasing and maintaining the interest of her husband, who is difficult to please. When a neighbor begins to intrude on the marriage the wife's world is changed. It is the familiar world of upper middle class England after the Second War and the preoccupation with appearances of the leisure class. The book written well before the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Camilla Parker Bowles,but it may remind some readers of the prince's preference for the less beautiful and more motherly Camilla over the glamourous Lady Diana .

i found this book in a bargain bin years ago and it has long been a favorite of mine. for some reason, i never thought to look for other books by Elizabeth Jenkins and only recently have. she appears to have had an even greater interest in english history than in fiction, but i've obtained a novel, "Harriet" and an Elizatheth I bio. "Harriet" from 1934 is a must read, a facinating and rather horrifying tale of the complicity between several people to gradually arrange the slow death of a simple minded girl for her money---wow! the Elizabeth I biography awaits me, but i anticipate it being special, since the author is a great storyteller. in my mind, i imagined a masterpiece theater production of Tortoise and the Hare, but my ideal Evelyn is no longer with us, Alan Bates. he had the magnetism and physical stature and air of intimidation which would have been perfect for the role. i wish someone would tackle the story, and can't believe someone hasn't already. but for a civilized and unconventional story of a disintegrating marriage, Tortoise and the Hare is unmatched.

Imogen Gresham is 37, married to a very successful barrister. They have an eleven-year-old son, a rather beastly boy named Gavin. Imogen's husband, Evelyn, develops a friendship with their neighbor, a wealthy fifty-something-year-old spinster named Blanche Silcox. She and Imogen are completely opposite; and it's Evelyn's relationship with Blanche that colors the whole tone of his relationship with his wife.

Imogen is a domestic, preferring home over hunting or any of the other country pursuits that her husband engages in. It's partly due to this as well that their relationship becomes fraught with tension. They have nothing in common, so it's really no wonder that Evelyn turns to an older woman (one much closer in age to him than Imogen is) for, at the very least, friendship. It's an odd affair; usually the femme fatale is a younger, not some staid, aging spinster. So the whole dynamic of the novel shifts. It's perfectly natural that Evelyn and Blanche should become friends; but their relationship isn't wholly natural. I still can't quite figure things out.

What I loved about this book was Imogen's reaction to the whole affair; it's because of it, and her discovery of what's going on, that she grows and matures as a person. When I began to read this novel, Imogen more or less faded into the background; she really wasn't compelling enough as a main character, and so I really didn't become attached to her right away. But the more I read, the more I liked her. She displays a quiet strength as she faces Evelyn and Blache's affair hat I found quite admirable. I don't think that a lot of people in her situation, with her kind of personality, would have the strength to do what she does in the end. And she gets major points for putting up with Evelyn for all those years! Elizabeth Jenkins has been compared to Jane Austen and Barbara Pym; there's less humor in The Tortoise and the Hare, but it's still a wonderful novel.

Elizabeth Jenkins was a biographer who was best known for her biographies of Elizabeth I and Jane Austen. She passed away last month, aged 105.

The obit pages are an important source of leads for great yet undeservedly obscure books. That was where I learned of The Tortoise and the Hare by the recently deceased Elizabeth Jenkins, whom I already knew of as the author of a wonderful biography of Jane Austen. I finished reading The Tortoise and the Hare last night, rather too late, and am still under its spell. Such a book should not be forgotten, yet it largely is.

What made it at once so much fun to read and so satisfying as a work of art? The sly humor, the use of telling detail, and the aptness of the social observation, though it describes a world that is both unfamiliar to me and long vanished (English, upper-middle class, late 1940s or early 50s) The subtle way the story is told. The ending. Especially, the ending. It is a truly magnificent ending, which surprised me, for all along, though I was enjoying the journey the book was taking me on, I kept feeling the structure -- the plot -- was odd. Unusual. Where was she going with this?

The novel tells the story of about a year in the life of Imogen, a sensitive and attractive woman of 37, married to Evelyn, a successful lawyer 15 years older, and her gradually dawning horror and despair as she realizes she is losing her husband to an unlikely rival: a never-married, badly dressed, unattractive neighbor, Blanche, age 50. Blanche is decisive, generous, practical and rich. Unlike Imogen, she enjoys fishing, hunting and outings to the race track. She is everything Imogen is not, and Imogen's self-confidence, never strong to start with, slowly wilts as she moves from vague discontent to suspicion, then to fear, then to certainty that Blanche has become her husband's mistress. The couple's one child, Gavin, is a copy of his father, and his contemptuous treatment of Imogen is a humorous foil for the more subtle cruelty meted out by Evelyn. Among those in the household, only Gavin's friend, Tim Leeper, who has sought refuge from his own chaotic home (the scenes at the Leepers' are among the broadest and most amusing in the book), seems to have any admiration for Imogen and her quiet virtues.

The book's narrative structure is odd, because nearly the entire novel is taken up with the gradual crushing of Imogen. She is passive, inert, completely under the spell of her charismatic and adored husband even as she realizes she is losing him. A woman from another era, she has defined herself completely in the role of wife and mother, only to find she has failed at both. Her despair is nearly total, yet the flashes of wit and beauty keep the story from becoming too depressing. And yet as I kept reading, I kept asking myself, what is she going to DO? And when is she going to do it? The structure of a novel demands conflict and resolution -- a character resisting, in some fashion, the mess she has been presented with. And yet Imogen seems powerless to do anything. Until, finally, she does.

I'm not sure how to feel about this book. On the one hand, the author's amazing descriptions, the depth of her characterizations, her ability to draw us into her world, were absorbing. On the other hand, I don't think I've read a book that left me feeling more unsettled than this one did. The lack of resolution, the deliberate failure to tie everything up in a neat little bow, was frustrating, yet the ending was perfect for the book and the situation. This book took me far from where I expected to end up, but the journey was never less than amazing. I can't wait to find more by Elizabeth Jenkins.

I tried to take into consideration that this book was originally published in 1954 and so the world and women were completely different especially concerning gender roles.
But this book though slow moving -and I didn't mind that - was strange and pathetic especially with the women characters.
Every step Blanche took to inching into their lives -Imogene did nothing.
She didn't fight back -she didn't try to keep Evelyn she allows it to happen.

And then when it finally did come to a show down -all she can do is yell "how dare you" a couple of times and that's it.

And the whole thing with Gavin -what a snot nosed little brat. He should have been spanked.

The only redeeming thing about the story was her friends Cecil, Hunter, Paul and of course the adorable Tim.
Her relationship with Tim - her surrogate son -made up for much.
Evelyn was a thoroughly unlikeable character who seemed very self absorbed who needs a woman like Blanche to whip him into shape.
And god forbid Imogene keeps the plates the way she wants them -so silly.
But overall Imogene seemed like a fragile woman who let life trample over her.

I had never read any of Jenkins' books and after reading this one
very slim chance I,d ever read another. She's so wordy I wondered
if she was trying to be a female Henry James. James' books at least
were interesting; this one was not.