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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
There was a time in my youth when I fell in love with Elizabeth Bowen. Her gorgeous high baroque prose style ravished me. You know how sometimes a writer announces herself as a soulmate, settles herself thrillingly into your mind and begins to help you see with more clarity an aesthetic of the world you had only previously sensed? Elizabeth Bowen, following Virginia Woolf, did that for me. I felt we were soul mates. And Death of the Heart was my favourite of her novels.
Essentially it’s a novel about innocence. But Bowen adds something new to the standard ideas of innocence. For one thing it’s not necessarily a virtue in her eyes. Just the opposite in fact. Bowen sees innocence as a health hazard for civilised society. And, through the 16 year old orphan Portia, she explores the dismantling havoc innocence can wreak on civilisation’s defence structures – here represented by Anna and Thomas, a somewhat decadent married pair whose life is mostly refined ennui and whose home Portia enters. Portia herself was born outside of civilisation’s defensive ramparts – the child of an illicit affair on the part of Thomas’s father and an abiding source of shame to Thomas. So Portia enters the house as an enemy. And Portia, like most solitary outcasts, is a keen observer. She keeps a diary.
Death of the Heart is also a novel about secrets and betrayal. Both Anna and Thomas have guilty secrets. Most of all perhaps the sham nature of their marriage. And when Anna deviously reads Portia’s diary it’s as if this sham is suddenly and fatally exposed. Portia too feels betrayed - "One's sentiments -- call them that -- one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist: only when they are betrayed or, worse still, when one betrays them does one realize their power." Portia’s subsequent attempts to find a new home, both symbolically and literally, first with the rake Eddy and then the equally innocent and homeless Major Brunt wreak further havoc.
Bowen’s sense and therefore evocation of place is one of her great strengths as a writer. Few writers can conjure up place with so much haunting pulsing atmosphere – whether it’s the soulless harmonies of Windsor Terrace where Anna and Thomas live, Regent’s Park with its icy lake and, later, blooming roses, the seaside town of Seale or the seedy Bayswater hotel which down at the heel Major Brunt calls his home. Place in her books has agency. In this book place is home - the idea of home as sanctuary being another theme of this novel.
"After inside upheavals, it is important to fix on imperturbable things. Their imperturbableness, their air that nothing has happened renews our guarantee. Pictures would not be hung plumb over the centres of fireplaces or wallpapers pasted on with such precision that their seams make no break in the pattern if life were really not possible to adjudicate for. These things are what we mean when we speak of civilization: they remind us how exceedingly seldom the unseemly or unforeseeable rears its head. In this sense, the destruction of buildings and furniture is more palpably dreadful to the spirit than the destruction of human life."
Essentially it’s a novel about innocence. But Bowen adds something new to the standard ideas of innocence. For one thing it’s not necessarily a virtue in her eyes. Just the opposite in fact. Bowen sees innocence as a health hazard for civilised society. And, through the 16 year old orphan Portia, she explores the dismantling havoc innocence can wreak on civilisation’s defence structures – here represented by Anna and Thomas, a somewhat decadent married pair whose life is mostly refined ennui and whose home Portia enters. Portia herself was born outside of civilisation’s defensive ramparts – the child of an illicit affair on the part of Thomas’s father and an abiding source of shame to Thomas. So Portia enters the house as an enemy. And Portia, like most solitary outcasts, is a keen observer. She keeps a diary.
Death of the Heart is also a novel about secrets and betrayal. Both Anna and Thomas have guilty secrets. Most of all perhaps the sham nature of their marriage. And when Anna deviously reads Portia’s diary it’s as if this sham is suddenly and fatally exposed. Portia too feels betrayed - "One's sentiments -- call them that -- one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist: only when they are betrayed or, worse still, when one betrays them does one realize their power." Portia’s subsequent attempts to find a new home, both symbolically and literally, first with the rake Eddy and then the equally innocent and homeless Major Brunt wreak further havoc.
Bowen’s sense and therefore evocation of place is one of her great strengths as a writer. Few writers can conjure up place with so much haunting pulsing atmosphere – whether it’s the soulless harmonies of Windsor Terrace where Anna and Thomas live, Regent’s Park with its icy lake and, later, blooming roses, the seaside town of Seale or the seedy Bayswater hotel which down at the heel Major Brunt calls his home. Place in her books has agency. In this book place is home - the idea of home as sanctuary being another theme of this novel.
"After inside upheavals, it is important to fix on imperturbable things. Their imperturbableness, their air that nothing has happened renews our guarantee. Pictures would not be hung plumb over the centres of fireplaces or wallpapers pasted on with such precision that their seams make no break in the pattern if life were really not possible to adjudicate for. These things are what we mean when we speak of civilization: they remind us how exceedingly seldom the unseemly or unforeseeable rears its head. In this sense, the destruction of buildings and furniture is more palpably dreadful to the spirit than the destruction of human life."
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Loveable characters:
No
Death of the Heart is widely considered Elizabeth Bowen's masterpiece. I hadn't previously read any of her work but I didn't quite love this as much as I expected. Perhaps for all its refined sensibility and astutely critical social comedy there simply wasn't quite enough at stake to make it compelling for me.
The concept of home looms large. People either have homes or they don't. Portia, the main character, is a sixteen year old orphan who has lived most of her life in hotels on the continent due to the ignominious nature of her parent's relationship which begins as an extra-marital affair. The novel begins when she is taken in for a year by her much older half-brother and his highly sophisticated and disappointed wife, Anna. Portia only really connects with other homeless people, principally the caddish Eddie, who might or might not be having an affair with Anna. When Anna reads Portia's diary and Portia finds out the façade of middle class proprietary in the household is shattered and everyone begins to feel nakedly exposed.
The characters are all excellently drawn, the writing is often superb but at times the plot felt a bit forced, epitomised by the very stylised unnatural dialogue and the rather unconvincing nature of Portia and Eddie's relationship. I never quite believed Eddie, a handsome twenty three year old who has had a novel published would be attracted to the rather childish sixteen year old Portia. I never understood what relevance it had that he was a published author (especially as there's another published author in the novel). It's a small detail but why could Eddie not have been nineteen and not a published author? On the other hand, Portia's other unsuitable suitor is the elderly Major Brutt who is down on his luck and living in a hotel. He was a fabulous character.
So, not bowled over but there was more than enough I liked to ensure I'll read another Bowen.
The concept of home looms large. People either have homes or they don't. Portia, the main character, is a sixteen year old orphan who has lived most of her life in hotels on the continent due to the ignominious nature of her parent's relationship which begins as an extra-marital affair. The novel begins when she is taken in for a year by her much older half-brother and his highly sophisticated and disappointed wife, Anna. Portia only really connects with other homeless people, principally the caddish Eddie, who might or might not be having an affair with Anna. When Anna reads Portia's diary and Portia finds out the façade of middle class proprietary in the household is shattered and everyone begins to feel nakedly exposed.
The characters are all excellently drawn, the writing is often superb but at times the plot felt a bit forced, epitomised by the very stylised unnatural dialogue and the rather unconvincing nature of Portia and Eddie's relationship. I never quite believed Eddie, a handsome twenty three year old who has had a novel published would be attracted to the rather childish sixteen year old Portia. I never understood what relevance it had that he was a published author (especially as there's another published author in the novel). It's a small detail but why could Eddie not have been nineteen and not a published author? On the other hand, Portia's other unsuitable suitor is the elderly Major Brutt who is down on his luck and living in a hotel. He was a fabulous character.
So, not bowled over but there was more than enough I liked to ensure I'll read another Bowen.
The characters were well developed. The ending was a disappointment.
With a title like The Death of the Heart, a review doesn’t really seem necessary.
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen was published in 1938 in the foreshadow of WWII.
Without a friend in the world, orphaned Portia goes to London to spend a year with her half brother and his wife, a wish of their dead father. To see how the other half lives? To experience life in a grand house with a real family?
The naive, awkward and inner Portia puzzles together her misplaced idealistic perceptions, interaction by interaction on to the experienced, cynical role models set into her life as would be protectors. Both the innocent and the experienced are to be pitied.
“She asked herself humbly for what reason people said what they did not mean, and did not say what they meant. She felt most certain to find the clue when she felt the frenzy behind the clever remark.”
The sentences are beautiful, the mood is perfect. Highly recommended.
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen was published in 1938 in the foreshadow of WWII.
Without a friend in the world, orphaned Portia goes to London to spend a year with her half brother and his wife, a wish of their dead father. To see how the other half lives? To experience life in a grand house with a real family?
The naive, awkward and inner Portia puzzles together her misplaced idealistic perceptions, interaction by interaction on to the experienced, cynical role models set into her life as would be protectors. Both the innocent and the experienced are to be pitied.
“She asked herself humbly for what reason people said what they did not mean, and did not say what they meant. She felt most certain to find the clue when she felt the frenzy behind the clever remark.”
The sentences are beautiful, the mood is perfect. Highly recommended.
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
I tried to read this book because I heard a good review of it on a podcast I like. Just couldn't hang in there.
This is similar to The Saplings, in that the misery seems never ending. And even though it is torturous to read, there is something so visceral about the writing that I love it. Despite the period, it still feels real to me today.