Featured Reading Guide
Elizabeth Bowen
On the face of it the story is about a woman who is given reason to suspect that the man with whom she is in love is betraying his country Another man is on his track, and a triangular situation develops. All the elements of a hunter-and-hunted thriller are here, but what she makes of them is an internal drama of remarkable perception and understanding in a domestic setting in embattled London. Her imagin-ative interpretation of the effect of war on the manners, morals and emotions of those not directly engaged in the fighting is drawn from an uncannily poignant recall of the wartime London scene…
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topAbout the Book
On the face of it the story is about a woman who is given reason to suspect that the man with whom she is in love is betraying his country Another man is on his track, and a triangular situation develops. All the elements of a hunter-and-hunted thriller are here, but what she makes of them is an internal drama of remarkable perception and understanding in a domestic setting in embattled London. Her imagin-ative interpretation of the effect of war on the manners, morals and emotions of those not directly engaged in the fighting is drawn from an uncannily poignant recall of the wartime London scene.
topStarting Points for Discussion
- How important is it that the main events of the story coincide with the major events of the Second World War?
- What are your thoughts on the characters’ experience of living in wartime London?
- Why is the theme of allegiance to one’s country and one’s loved ones of such great importance to this story?
- Bowen is much concerned with the sense of place in her novels. What importance do the various houses have in this book?
- In what ways does Robert’s visit to Holme Dene parallel the dramatic scene in the restaurant between Stella, Harrison and Louie on the same night?
- The upstairs in Holme Dene ‘ had been planned with a playful circumlocution – corridors, archways, recesses, half-landings, ledges, niches, and balustrades combined to fuddle any sense of direction and check, so far as possible, progress from room to room’ (p.256). How far do you think this is a metaphor for the life of intrigue which Robert, as a spy, lives and Harrison, as an investigator, follows?
- Do you consider the absence of men, such as fathers and brothers, in the novel as significant?
- Is the story humorous?
- What is the significance of the references to ghosts in the novel?
Other Books by Elizabeth Bowen
A Time In Rome
Elizabeth Bowen’s account of a time spent in Rome is no ordinary guidebook but…
A World Of Love
A packet of letters, found in an attic, leads a young girl into the world of…
Bowen’s Court & Seven Winters…
In SEVEN WINTERS Elizabeth Brown recalls with endearing candour her family and…
Collected Stories
Throughout these seventy-nine stories – love stories, ghost stories, stories…
Eva Trout
Monolithic, rich, unloved and with a genius for unreality; Eva Trout has a …
The Death Of The Heart
It is London in the late 1930s, and into a coterie of rather grand early-middle…
The Hotel
These were the balmy days of the 1920s. The English, liberated from one long…
The House In Paris
To the stuffy, French bourgeois house, with the evil old woman in her sickroom…
The Last September
The family at the ‘big house’ are in an equivocal position. Interest and tr…
Suggested Further Reading
- The Human Factor ~ Graham Greene
- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy ~ John Le Carré
- The Old Country ~ Alan Bebbett
- An Englishman Abroad ~ Alan Bebbett