The soldier returns from the front to the three women who love him.
His wife, Kitty, with her cold, moonlight beauty, and his devoted cousin Jenny wait in their exquisite home on the crest of the Harrow-weald.
Margaret Allington, his first and long-forgotten love, is nearby in the dreary suburb of Wealdstone.
But the soldier is shell-shocked and can only remember the Margaret he loved fifteen years before, when he was a young man and she an inn-keeper's daughter...
His wife, Kitty, with her cold, moonlight beauty, and his devoted cousin Jenny wait in their exquisite home on the crest of the Harrow-weald.
Margaret Allington, his first and long-forgotten love, is nearby in the dreary suburb of Wealdstone.
But the soldier is shell-shocked and can only remember the Margaret he loved fifteen years before, when he was a young man and she an inn-keeper's daughter...
I read this for a Goodreads group read (almost an alliteration :). It's a novella (112 pages) written in 1918, but packs a literary punch that left me breathless.
Rebecca West's style is lyrical, her poetic, chiseled prose delivers a terribly beautiful story, at the same time heartrendering and unputdownable, like an accident waiting to happen. Everything is so heavenlike before it happens, but you can't tear your eyes away and it tears a little part of you at the same time, makes you wonder.
On one side, there is this beauty, the love, on the other side there is social criticism : the upper class, even priests, simply despise the other side in a paternal but definitive way. And the question of what you do with your life as you grow older ? Conform or follow your heart ? Your dreams ? Can you sacrifice the person you love ?
One of the best book of 2020 for me.
wow! Thanks for sharing. I didn't know this author
ReplyDeleteI only knew her name but now, I have to read more !
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