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3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
emotional
funny
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Descriptive in the writing and easy to picture characters and setting. I felt it was constantly tinged with sadness and dejection. Each character had something miserable in their outlooks, whether due to the effects of war losses or they were just miserable. Beth an author in the book spends all her time writing novels which seem to be filled with gloom. Her husband Robert, the local doctor feeling in,loved turns to the neighbour Tory who is still in love with her ex husband Teddy but is happy to enjoy Robert’s attention. His daughter Prudence who is depicted as being simple minded releases there is an affair going on and ignores her father as much as possible and is rude to Tory. Beth is seemingly oblivious to what is going on around her. Bertram, a visitor to the village paints pictures which don’t seem to be very good and he eventually decides to marry Tory, to which she agrees when she realises that Robert will not leave Beth. Mrs Bracey is the local gossip and she is bed ridden but that doesn’t stop her from making her daughters’ lives miserable, especially her eldest Maisie. Lily, a widow who runs the waxworks dislikes being on her own but is afraid to go out with anyone. Mrs Flintcroft has a nephew Eddy who is very attracted to Maisie, but when Mrs Bracey realises that she does all she can to keep them apart.
All in all a book about misery
All in all a book about misery
Goings on in a small British fishing/tourist village after the second World War. Men and money are scarce but gossip is not. How the various characters face the challenges has more to do with their innate personalities than their circumstances. Taylor is good at drawing characters, who cast a doleful mood over the book.
There is much to admire - the evocation of a dying harbour town, the crisp prose, some beautiful comedic touches and the accurate description of what it feels like to write. But the novel leaves a sour taste. None of the characters are likeable - even the children. The women tend to be dreamers, deeply unhappy or both. And the men are all horrible - particularly Robert. They are portrayed as users and abusers of women. There is nobody I rooted for and no one I would like to meet. Not a patch on her masterpiece ‘Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont’.
I read this this book despite its awful 1980s chick-lit cover. I loved it. Deft writing about small unkindnesses and betrayals in an insular community.
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I’m not sure what else to say other than the fact that, even though Taylor wrote one of my favourite books last year (Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont), A View of the Harbour just did not work for me. It’s mostly about a group of people living in a small seaside town who have nothing better to do other than sticking their noses into each other’s lives. They also spend half the time feeling lonely and miserable about themselves. Other than that, nothing much happens in this book. It’s just a tough slog and I was mostly bored out of my mind.
It has a beautiful cover artwork though, so there’s that?
I’m not sure what else to say other than the fact that, even though Taylor wrote one of my favourite books last year (Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont), A View of the Harbour just did not work for me. It’s mostly about a group of people living in a small seaside town who have nothing better to do other than sticking their noses into each other’s lives. They also spend half the time feeling lonely and miserable about themselves. Other than that, nothing much happens in this book. It’s just a tough slog and I was mostly bored out of my mind.
It has a beautiful cover artwork though, so there’s that?
Sometimes you want to read a straightforward, down-to-earth, unpretentious novel, and this is such a book. Carefully drawn portraits of unremarkable people in an unremarkable seaside town form the backbone of an entirely remarkable novel. The writing is quiet and subdued, but gradually draws the reader into its world. The theme of art and artistry is woven through the book, as well as the pervading beauty of loneliness. Although this book has very little in common with [b:The Waves|863768|The Waves|Virginia Woolf|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347773711s/863768.jpg|6057263], it shares Woolf's fascination with the colour of light, and the passing of time, and seems at times to be a distinctly romantic companion to that modernist masterpiece.
Elizabeth (Coles) Taylor wrote in post-WW2 England just like D.E. Stevenson or Molly Clavering. And there the comparison ends, because where Stevenson is observant but gentle and forgiving, Taylor is observant, harsh, and wields her words like a scalpel. None of her characters are safe and therefore, no one in this story is particularly likable. (Maybe Stevie or Teddy, but they're children) This is not graphic like a modern story would be but it's sordid and vaguely discouraging.
I don't regret reading it, it's well written, but it's also not something I'd ever read again.
I don't regret reading it, it's well written, but it's also not something I'd ever read again.
What a great book! My favorite of the five (of 12) of her novels that I've read so far.
It seems like such a simple thing, just observations of people living in a seaside town, a little gossipy, but then wow! a profound statement and blam! a zinger about how men and women relate to each other, and then all of these precise little observations about people and relationships. My favorite thing is how brutal she is with the writer character, clearly describing her annoyance with herself and her chosen profession. (But also her love of and appreciation for the act of writing.)
I highly recommend her books - I've read The Sleeping Beauty, In a Summer Season, At Mrs. Lippincote's (another favorite), and Blaming. I'm very excited that I still have seven more to read.
It seems like such a simple thing, just observations of people living in a seaside town, a little gossipy, but then wow! a profound statement and blam! a zinger about how men and women relate to each other, and then all of these precise little observations about people and relationships. My favorite thing is how brutal she is with the writer character, clearly describing her annoyance with herself and her chosen profession. (But also her love of and appreciation for the act of writing.)
I highly recommend her books - I've read The Sleeping Beauty, In a Summer Season, At Mrs. Lippincote's (another favorite), and Blaming. I'm very excited that I still have seven more to read.
This is a wonderfully well observed book but it suffers from a chronic case of nothinghappensitis. I found Taylor's prose engagingly light but with moments of real poetry, and some of the characters within the novel were wonderful portraits. However, I never found myself particularly caring about what happened because it was obvious that there would be no great ructions to explore. Perhaps that's a failing on my part - the intensity of small dramas is certainly a worthy subject - but nevertheless I can't recommend A View of the Harbour quite as highly as many of the other books I've read this year.