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A review by buddhafish
A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor
4.0
54th book of 2023.
I made it to Taylor's third book, a title that was slightly more familiar to me than her first two; and it is here that you can feel her confidence building. She already wrote great sentences, but in this book they are even more refined. This novel is like Taylor's To the Lighthouse, and as her previous books were inspired by Austen, the Brontes, it's fairly clear to see Woolf was her inspiration here. The harbour is almost painted by Taylor's prose. Take this passage, for example.
Or, as I'm a sucker for artists/writers becoming adjectives: 'Out of the swollen, gilded Turneresque sky, a shaft of blood-red sunshine struck the painted jug on the washhand-stand...'
The start is a whirlwind of names. Taylor doesn't start the novel well but for the next 300 pages I was drawn into this little harbour and the quiet lives of its inhabitants, the whole novel feeling, well, yes, Turneresque. If you like delicate sentences, witty but subtle English humour and reading about mundane lives, everyday problems, illness, affairs, etc., then I recommend.
Turner's Calm Sea with Distant Grey Clouds
___________
[1] Though, for the life of me, can't figure this out. A typo? But of what? I Googled the word and it got two hits, both referring to this book, quoting the word. I'm lost.
I made it to Taylor's third book, a title that was slightly more familiar to me than her first two; and it is here that you can feel her confidence building. She already wrote great sentences, but in this book they are even more refined. This novel is like Taylor's To the Lighthouse, and as her previous books were inspired by Austen, the Brontes, it's fairly clear to see Woolf was her inspiration here. The harbour is almost painted by Taylor's prose. Take this passage, for example.
Nothing clouded Edward's happiness. Life entranced him. When the sun shone it touched his very bones. Time was undivided now by bells clanging; so he could drift, beguiled, unchevied [1] wandering in that maze of alley-ways where the roofs went tipping down so steeply towards the harbour that he could spit down the chimneys from where he stood, he thought. With the sun shining on them, these roofs were colours of pigeons - the slates of rose and grey and lavender and blue. It was all familiar yet wonderful to him.
Or, as I'm a sucker for artists/writers becoming adjectives: 'Out of the swollen, gilded Turneresque sky, a shaft of blood-red sunshine struck the painted jug on the washhand-stand...'
The start is a whirlwind of names. Taylor doesn't start the novel well but for the next 300 pages I was drawn into this little harbour and the quiet lives of its inhabitants, the whole novel feeling, well, yes, Turneresque. If you like delicate sentences, witty but subtle English humour and reading about mundane lives, everyday problems, illness, affairs, etc., then I recommend.
Turner's Calm Sea with Distant Grey Clouds
___________
[1] Though, for the life of me, can't figure this out. A typo? But of what? I Googled the word and it got two hits, both referring to this book, quoting the word. I'm lost.