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eileenmalone's review
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Through modern eyes, the portrayals of the sexual relationships are troubling.
Content Warnings
Minor: Sexual content and Abortion
suebarsby's review against another edition
4.0
She's always so much darker than you expect. There's a lot of moral ambiguity and I can't decide whether I find the female characters good or just really irritating. Probably both. But this is an interesting book, and ripe for discussion points.
miniritzreads's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Rape
ilariam's review against another edition
4.0
"All'ombra di Julius" è in tutto e per tutto un romanzo di Elizabeth Jane Howard: così come già visto nella saga dei Cazalet, l'attenzione è focalizzata principalmente sull'analisi psicologica dei personaggi, che si alternano, capitolo dopo capitolo, come punto di vista della narrazione.
L'impostazione corale non è il solo marchio di fabbrica: molte le somiglianze tematiche, a partire dal tema dei rapporti di coppia. Abbiamo Esme e Felix, con il loro amore adulterino tra un giovane di poco più di vent'anni e una moglie un po' troppo annoiata; Felix e Cressida, l'uomo ormai maturo e la donna che non è più una bambina, ma continua a cercare nei suoi amanti la figura paterna persa troppo presto; Emma e Dan, due personalità davvero particolari che normalmente faticano a trovare qualcuno con cui essere in sintonia, e che pure si trovano sin da subito sulla stessa lunghezza d'onda, sebbene il non essere abituati alle normali relazioni interpersonali causi qualche incomprensione. C'è quindi il legame tra Cressida e Emma, così lontane per età (dieci anni di differenza), aspetto (bellissima Cressida, piuttosto anonima Emma), personalità, ma estremamente unite; infine, lo strano e inaspettato triangolo amoroso tra Esme, Felix e Cressida, crudele e melodrammatico allo stesso tempo, con una madre che sta sfiorendo, e il cui posto viene preso dalla figlia ancora nel pieno dei suoi anni, così bella da far male, e alla cui malia nessuno sembra in grado di resistere.
Ciascuna a suo modo, Esme, Cressida e Emma sono personaggi piuttosto non convenzionali: Esme ha un carattere forte, ed ha sempre voluto vivere in pieno, nonostante un marito irrimediabilmente distante e freddo; Cressida è innamorata dell'amore, e continua a scegliere l'uomo sbagliato, finendo per farsi solo del male; Emma è fedele solo a se stessa, e non le importa se questo significa essere diversa dagli altri.
Sullo sfondo Julius, un personaggio di per sé piuttosto anonimo, con una vita come tante, che con la sua morte, però, si è reso indimenticabile, segnando profondamente il destino delle tre donne della sua famiglia.
Il racconto è scorrevole, si passa con fluidità dal presente alla rievocazione del passato (la giovinezza di Esme, il matrimonio con Julius, la storia con Felix); sullo sfondo, costantemente presente, una certa languida sensualità, una tonalità che pare voler caratterizzare l'intera narrazione.
Un romanzo per gli estimatori della saga dei Cazalet, ma anche per chi ama l'introspezione psicologica e complicate relazioni interpersonali.
L'impostazione corale non è il solo marchio di fabbrica: molte le somiglianze tematiche, a partire dal tema dei rapporti di coppia. Abbiamo Esme e Felix, con il loro amore adulterino tra un giovane di poco più di vent'anni e una moglie un po' troppo annoiata; Felix e Cressida, l'uomo ormai maturo e la donna che non è più una bambina, ma continua a cercare nei suoi amanti la figura paterna persa troppo presto; Emma e Dan, due personalità davvero particolari che normalmente faticano a trovare qualcuno con cui essere in sintonia, e che pure si trovano sin da subito sulla stessa lunghezza d'onda, sebbene il non essere abituati alle normali relazioni interpersonali causi qualche incomprensione. C'è quindi il legame tra Cressida e Emma, così lontane per età (dieci anni di differenza), aspetto (bellissima Cressida, piuttosto anonima Emma), personalità, ma estremamente unite; infine, lo strano e inaspettato triangolo amoroso tra Esme, Felix e Cressida, crudele e melodrammatico allo stesso tempo, con una madre che sta sfiorendo, e il cui posto viene preso dalla figlia ancora nel pieno dei suoi anni, così bella da far male, e alla cui malia nessuno sembra in grado di resistere.
Ciascuna a suo modo, Esme, Cressida e Emma sono personaggi piuttosto non convenzionali: Esme ha un carattere forte, ed ha sempre voluto vivere in pieno, nonostante un marito irrimediabilmente distante e freddo; Cressida è innamorata dell'amore, e continua a scegliere l'uomo sbagliato, finendo per farsi solo del male; Emma è fedele solo a se stessa, e non le importa se questo significa essere diversa dagli altri.
Sullo sfondo Julius, un personaggio di per sé piuttosto anonimo, con una vita come tante, che con la sua morte, però, si è reso indimenticabile, segnando profondamente il destino delle tre donne della sua famiglia.
Il racconto è scorrevole, si passa con fluidità dal presente alla rievocazione del passato (la giovinezza di Esme, il matrimonio con Julius, la storia con Felix); sullo sfondo, costantemente presente, una certa languida sensualità, una tonalità che pare voler caratterizzare l'intera narrazione.
Un romanzo per gli estimatori della saga dei Cazalet, ma anche per chi ama l'introspezione psicologica e complicate relazioni interpersonali.
tipperary's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
burritapal_1's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
I finished this book called after julius. It's about this family of britishers whose husband died when World War II started up and he was already too old to fight. so he took this boat out for a test ride and he drove it over to France even though he doesn't even know how to drive boats. So he could help pick up soldiers on the beach at Dunkirk or wherever it was. And one of them was hurt. And the dude Julius got shot on the way back; he was waving at a plane he thought was a British plane and it wasn't, it was a German plane. So he died on the way back. his wife had been having an affair with this guy named, what was his name Frank? No, Felix. Anyways so he had dumped her right when her husband took off for the war, because he decided to enlist. So this weekend that the whole book takes place in is where she, EsMe, the wife, invites Felix over, and she's thinking they're going to start up where they left off but he's like 20 years younger than she is and when he sees her daughterCressy, she's so beautiful that she's just knocks him off his feet and so he wants to marry her and then the other daughter, Emma, she's a shy little virgin, and she meets up with this poet Daniel in her family's publishing office and that guy's a fucking misogynist, okay?and he like rapes her and then tells her he's going to marry her so I was pissed off at the ending. fuck, author, you're going to make this woman, she's an innocent, Marry this fucking misogynist? It would have been at five stars except for that, so she got four stars. because the author was a really good writer and really brought these characters to life.
Julius and Esme:
"... he was a publisher, in his uncle's house, she discovered that evening, unmarried, and just 32. When he asked her whether she enjoyed poetry, of course she said yes. When, a few weeks later, he sent her a poem written out in pen and ink, she dutifully read all the words of it until - nearly at the end - she realized, because it described the dress she had worn that first evening, that he had actually written it about her, an exquisite shock to her vanity! But if he hadn't put the dress in she might never have known, and goodness knows, everything might have been different. They married when she was 20, in may, and it was not until he cast himself upon her with lines from a sonnet relevant to that month, but to little else, and which anyway turned out to have been written by shakespeare, that it dawned upon her that it was poetry that was his prevailing passion. This was a discovery upon which the Sun never set. In all moments of emotion he resorted to poetry, and these included making love to her. She had pleaded ignorance, but this only provoked hours of tender instruction, and every time he reached out for some slim calf-bound volume from a shelf or threw back his head and half shut his eyes ( he knew a fantastic amount of stuff by heart ) the same wave of unwilling reverence and irritated incomprehension swept over her. By the time she was having Cressy, she hit upon a counter interest with which he might at least sympathize. She had developed a passion, she said, for really good novels ( and she found, after a certain amount of perseverance, that this became true )."
So this is why she had an affair. Right?
The character Daniel, the poet/misogynist/rapist, is a TB patient. He's in the room that Emma puts him in at her mother's house, when he starts ruminating about all the room this house, him being brought up on a canal boat. We know he's a TB patient, because he starts thinking about it when he remembers the doctor ( Felix ) that he had met at the mother's house:
"... what he couldn't make out was how much of an occasion the whole evening had been for them. Sometimes he had felt that very much was one: when the mother asked that doctor to open the wine, his eyes had traveled from one face to the other and he felt that something serious and Shifty was going on. He didn't trust doctors anyway; he nearly made off when Emma had told him upstairs. You couldn't Trust them, as he well knew: full of what looked like Goodwill one minute, and then jab! Into your chest with a needle or sawing away at your rib bones with you enjoying the full privilege of a "local." They told you you needed it. How were you to know? The last thing he'd do to anyone who felt as rotten as he had felt would be to saw off bits of his ribs...."
There's a hilarious part when Jennifer Hammond, a neighbor of Esme's, is invited to the dinner. We don't know yet that she's the husband of the "dick" that Cressy is fucking. But we find it out when Jennifer calls and says that Daniel is coming, because the fog kept his flight from going out. He had told Cressy he couldn't see her this weekend because he was going to Rome. And here he is in her house. Well, Jennifer is getting very drunk, and she spills a drink all over herself, so Cressy takes out her handkerchief and gives it to jennifer. It doesn't take long before Jennifer is so drunk that she starts spouting the truth at her husband "dick." Cressy is watching Dan set off fireworks through a window:
"she was gazing at him so attentively that she missed the first couple of remarks in what she soon recognized as an altercation, if nothing worse. Mrs Hammond was speaking, or rather half shouting, in a voice of varying pitch. 'I know it now all right, now I've had a second sniff at it. That's the muck you come home stinking to high heaven of when you've been up in London for one of your boring business functions. Of course it's hers - she gave it to me before dinner.
...
By the time Esme had disengaged herself and moved over to where the altercation was, Mrs Hammond was shouting again. Her husband had her by the arm and kept telling her that she was drunk and must shut up and come home, but she took no notice of him. 'sneaking off. I knew the two of you were up to something. Laughing your heads off about me. What fun to have your lover and his poor fool of a wife to dinner and play footie with him under the table and plan your next little dose of -'
Cressy was facing her. She said in tones of loathing. 'I didn't invite you here and I don't want you here, either of you, and there isn't going to be a next little anything at all. Anyway, please go. I can't see why you're not ashamed to stay.'
'would you like to go upstairs and lie down for a bit?' asked Esme- sort of lowering the price, she thought.
'no, I wouldn't! I refuse to be shoved out of the way as if I was a - a piece of furniture. I'm staying here and we're having this out.' "
We get a glimpse of what Daniel's like when he's reminiscing about a woman that he'd known in the TB sanitarium, Violet:
"... then one day they'd gone for a little walk in the grounds and sat on a piece of rough grass out past the borders, and she said, 'you want me, don't you?' And such was the ease between them that he'd simply nodded. 'well, go on, then,' she said 'I don't mind.' and she'd lain down with her hands behind her head until he'd taken off his jacket and made her a pillow. He'd had her, and it had been like all the feeling in the world without pain to his body, and after the weeks of feeling pain this was like water on a scorching desert. Afterwards she said, 'did you like it?' and he said, 'yes, I liked it all right.' And then, looking at her face, friendly still but unmoved, he said, 'thank you.' And then her face did move, and she said, 'nobody's ever thanked me before,' and he thought she was going to cry. So he told her that he was going to make life so she'd never have to thank him, never be grateful, and she wouldn't go on doing kindnesses and not knowing what they were. He told her that he loved her and wanted to marry her and they'd have a wonderful life, and she lay there listening - smiled all the time, but she never said a word... "
she never said a word, because she knew he was full of bullshit. His character is like so many men, who think having sex means just sticking your dick in, jacking off inside of a vagina, and boom! The woman is supposed to enjoy it, oh so much!.
So she gets released from the sanitarium, despite telling them that she's still sick. Nevertheless, she's sent home to her family, where her father has molested her since she was young, and there's five other people in the one room flat. She goes to a hotel and takes her life.
Cressy and Felix are taking the sweet Major Hawkes, another neighbor of Esme's, home, and afterwards they Park his car, and she tells him what her life has been like, about a man that she had an affair with, and she got pregnant, and when she told him .. he tells her something so stupid..
"... then he went to stay with friends in the country, because he needed a rest after all the strain I'd put him to. He wrote to me saying he thought it was better if we didn't meet for a time. He was right there. And that was that.'
After a long time she said, 'I do wish we had got a cigarette.'
'you know, don't you,' he said, 'that most men aren't like that?'
he felt her shake her head.
'he was a bastard,' he insisted. 'most men simply don't behave quite as childishly and brutally as that. You were just damned unlucky. Whatever most men thought about wanting a child or not, they wouldn't be so irresponsible or obsessed with their own panic.' "
I just love it when men or Men characters tell women that most men are not "like that." How the fuck would they know?
Cressy and Felix are a couple now, having broke the news to Esme. They go back in his car to London, and the couple that Felix is staying with has no room for them to spend the night, and so they go trying to find a hotel. But there are none available, so he goes to a cab stand and the cabbies tell him where he can find a cheap motel.
They're in the room together, and she realizes that this seems so cheap, that she just doesn't feel like she can go through with it, even though he's told her that he's marrying her.
"she found her cigarettes, and he lighted one for her. 'you have the most beautiful hands of anyone I've ever seen.' (but someone had said that to her before; he might have meant it, but he hadn't loved her.) 'At least we're alone here; at least there's that about it.'
She did not reply. She did not feel that it was at all 'at least': being alone with him was looming so large that she didn't think it would matter much where they were. She drank some more whiskey and handed him the glass. It's stupid, really, she thought. I've done this kind of thing dozens of times before: I can always Escape tomorrow. I don't owe him anything at all. And she imagined herself working with Ann [who works with blind children], humbly learning how to care about other people so much that she never had time or inclination to care about herself, an exhausting, pure life, with one's conscience like milk, no more hangovers, as she had about her mother- even, in a way, about Jennifer Hammond.... People always thought you did these things because you got paid, or loved sex, or being flattered; they never seemed to think that you might just do them because you knew that they were the ropes and you wanted to get into the ring, or go on the voyage, or whatever the ropes were supposed to be about."
...
" and here was a man whom she liked - very much, even more than that - but the situation wasn't better because of that. It was much worse, worse than it had ever been with anyone else. She couldn't face the dreary, routine embarrassment of taking off her clothes, let alone getting into bed with him - with him, of all people.
'can I have some more whiskey?' He said yes, of course she could, and poured it. Then he added 'it's not just this place. You wish you weren't here with me, don't you?'
She shook her head, half aware that this was ambiguous."
"... she shut her eyes and waited for him to undo the cord around her waist - impatient, fumbling, still pretending to care for her. Why didn't he get on with it? If she was only allowed a ration of kindness, then he damn well ought only to be allowed a ration of time, of her passive availability.
She began to undo her trousers herself, but his hands stopped her. He sat up, gazed at her intently, for a second, and said 'how many times have you let yourself be raped in return for a little affection?'
She stared at him; his face was in shadow, and she could not see his expression. He repeated, 'how many times?' and she realized that she had whispered, 'I don't know.' "
I almost hated the author for writing this, because it's so fucking true.
Emma and Daniel are back in Emma and Cressy's flat in London. She leaves him in the sitting room and she goes to take a bath.
" 'I know what you want. Be silent, then.' He stood upright and took off his jacket and laid it deliberately on the floor. Then he rolled up the sleeves of his jersey. His forearms were muscular, very white, with dark blue veins. 'that's better. I'm used to this out of doors; I haven't lived your kind of life.'
He put his arms under her shoulders and eased off the bathrobe. Then he laid his head on her breasts and started kissing them, and her spine kicked again with the shock.
When he stopped he lifted his head to look down at her. 'you're ready for it now, aren't you?' He touched a breast. 'It's like a hard little raspberry. Beauty. Don't you move, then.'
He stood up and, without taking his eyes off her, undid his belt and stripped off his trousers, 'I'm ready for you too. See?' And before she could answer, he laid himself full length upon her; she could feel that part of him hard against her stomach, then against her thighs. 'make room for me.' And as though she had done this all her life, she moved her legs apart.
He put one hand around her head, began kissing her mouth. His other hand was touching her down there, parting her, pressing until it hurt. 'you're resisting me! Don't do that. You want me. You can't stop me now.' He drove into her suddenly, and she cried out; she felt she was Breaking Inside with the violent pain. She arched her back under his weight as the pain flowered to torture, until she thought she was going to die from it, and instantly he came in her, and she cried out again and could not stop crying... "
yeah that's the wonderful character Daniel that the innocent little Emma gets to have from this author. 😡
paula_s's review against another edition
4.0
“Despues de Julius” se publicó en 1965, ya se habían publicado las tres primeras novelas de los Cazalet por entonces, pero “Un tiempo nuevo” no se publicó hasta treinta años más tarde por lo que no sabría decir si el libro que os presento hoy es anterior o posterior. Podríamos decir que es paralelo tanto en tiempo como en estilo, ya que sigue la misma estructura de darle un pedazo de la historia a cada personaje principal y, como si fuera un puzzle, construir un todo que es la trama principal. Aunque Julius Grace murió en 1940 rescatando gente en el mar de Dunkerque y todo lo que se descubre de él es veinte años más tarde.
La viuda de Julius, Esme, tuvo un amante en vida de su marido, un médico llamado Felix, pero rompieron cuando murió su marido. La hija mayor Cressy (Cressida) se casó a los 18 años pero su marido murió en la guerra seis meses más tarde. Fue un año después de la muerte de Julius. Desde entonces Cressy ha ido de relación en relación, siempre con la esperanza de que cada uno de ellos fuera “el definitivo”, independientemente de que sus amantes fueran solteros o casados. La hija pequeña, Emma, tenía 9 años cuando Julius murió, es la única que siguió los pasos del padre en el mundo editorial pero no concilia su vida con la idea del matrimonio. En definitiva todo gira en torno a Julius, pero Julius parece no importarle a nadie.
Esta es una historia que se desarrolla durante un fin de semana de noviembre en Sussex, veinte años más tarde de que Julius muriera: Esme, Felix, Cressy, Emma y un poeta llamado Daniel, que se pegó a Emma en el último minuto y prácticamente se autoinvitó, desgranan tanto monólogos internos como diálogos entre ellos bastante interesantes en los que se exploran las escalas de grises de asuntos humanos como el amor, la lujuria, el resentimiento de una hija hacia su madre, las dificultades de los amantes de edades muy dispares, el tiempo perdido, el valor de una mujer, el matrimonio, los recuerdos de la guerra.… Y llama la atención especialmente que Cressy reflexione sobre el hombre con el que su madre fue infiel a su padre cuando ella misma mantiene una relación con un hombre casado al que se aferra por miedo a la soledad. Justamente es la soledad lo que une y separa a todos estos personajes cuyo nexo de unión es Julius, el ausente. Por si no estuvieran las cosas bastante tensas en la casa, el sábado se presentan dos invitados inesperados y todo se complica.
Me encanta cómo escribe Elizabeth Jane Howard, rezuma estilo, sencillez, una honestidad directa e incluso incómoda a veces, que te hace ver lo que hay detrás de las fotografías de caras sonrientes, aunque no quieras. Es una gran analista del alma humana traduciéndola a un lenguaje accesible a cualquier ser humano. Tiene empatía aun sin esconder la cara menos amable de la vida. Es maravillosamente inocente a pesar de todo.
La viuda de Julius, Esme, tuvo un amante en vida de su marido, un médico llamado Felix, pero rompieron cuando murió su marido. La hija mayor Cressy (Cressida) se casó a los 18 años pero su marido murió en la guerra seis meses más tarde. Fue un año después de la muerte de Julius. Desde entonces Cressy ha ido de relación en relación, siempre con la esperanza de que cada uno de ellos fuera “el definitivo”, independientemente de que sus amantes fueran solteros o casados. La hija pequeña, Emma, tenía 9 años cuando Julius murió, es la única que siguió los pasos del padre en el mundo editorial pero no concilia su vida con la idea del matrimonio. En definitiva todo gira en torno a Julius, pero Julius parece no importarle a nadie.
Esta es una historia que se desarrolla durante un fin de semana de noviembre en Sussex, veinte años más tarde de que Julius muriera: Esme, Felix, Cressy, Emma y un poeta llamado Daniel, que se pegó a Emma en el último minuto y prácticamente se autoinvitó, desgranan tanto monólogos internos como diálogos entre ellos bastante interesantes en los que se exploran las escalas de grises de asuntos humanos como el amor, la lujuria, el resentimiento de una hija hacia su madre, las dificultades de los amantes de edades muy dispares, el tiempo perdido, el valor de una mujer, el matrimonio, los recuerdos de la guerra.… Y llama la atención especialmente que Cressy reflexione sobre el hombre con el que su madre fue infiel a su padre cuando ella misma mantiene una relación con un hombre casado al que se aferra por miedo a la soledad. Justamente es la soledad lo que une y separa a todos estos personajes cuyo nexo de unión es Julius, el ausente. Por si no estuvieran las cosas bastante tensas en la casa, el sábado se presentan dos invitados inesperados y todo se complica.
Me encanta cómo escribe Elizabeth Jane Howard, rezuma estilo, sencillez, una honestidad directa e incluso incómoda a veces, que te hace ver lo que hay detrás de las fotografías de caras sonrientes, aunque no quieras. Es una gran analista del alma humana traduciéndola a un lenguaje accesible a cualquier ser humano. Tiene empatía aun sin esconder la cara menos amable de la vida. Es maravillosamente inocente a pesar de todo.
chills_multiply's review
dark
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape
schopflin's review against another edition
3.0
It's impossible for Elizabeth Jane Howard to write a bad book but this wasn't my favourite. I found it very stagey and wasn't convinced by the working class character. It reminded me of Iris Murdoch's books from the same period.
jmeston's review against another edition
4.0
Loved the female characters. I am left agog after the ending. The book fulfills its romantic/comedic arc and works against it at the same time. Hated Dan.