A haunting portrayal of love and betrayal in a London hollowed by war. It is wartime London, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Stella discovers that her lover Robert is suspected of selling information to the enemy. Harrison, the British intelligence agent on his trail, wants to bargain, the price for his silence being Stella herself. Caught between two men and unsure who she can trust, the flimsy structures of Stella's life begin to crumble. 'Alive with the erotic tensions of the ...
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A haunting portrayal of love and betrayal in a London hollowed by war. It is wartime London, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Stella discovers that her lover Robert is suspected of selling information to the enemy. Harrison, the British intelligence agent on his trail, wants to bargain, the price for his silence being Stella herself. Caught between two men and unsure who she can trust, the flimsy structures of Stella's life begin to crumble. 'Alive with the erotic tensions of the blackout, the Blitz and the heightened pleasures of sex in the proximity of death' London Review of Books WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROY FOSTER This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition
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Elizabeth Bowen took a long time to follow up her successful "Death of the Heart" (1939) with a fresh work. When it came, after the war, it gained deserved credit for its descriptions of war- torn London, where Bowen's over-ripe prose fits, I suppose, a broad, decaying subject. Her plot in "The Heat of the Day", however, led her uncertainly into Greeneland territory of spying and class -misunderstanding. The characterisation tends to lose itself in a fog of preciosity and introspection, resulting in a portentousness not underpinned by credible motive or ambition. In the psychological analysis and in the dialogue, the style is so refined and attenuated that it irritates and fatigues the reader, with echoes of James and Woolf not helping at all. We are at once reminded how much more distinguished as novelists they both were than Bowen, whose prominence during her lifetime now seems a bit odd. This novel of hers hasn't worn well. Even so, it repays a perusal, for it is close to a climactic period in history, for which it provides evidence of a sort. Also the scenes set in the country estate in Ireland which in other works gave Bowen some of her favourite fictional moments come off competently.
