A review by sarahmatthews
In a Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor

medium-paced

In a Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor 

Read on audio

Narrator: Gretal Davis for RNIB Talking Books

Pub. 1961, 220pp

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I’ve recently started reading Elizabeth Taylor’s backlist and the title of this one appealed as summer is finally happening in the UK right now. Gretal Davis isn’t my favourite audio narrator but once I started listening and managed to get over my aversion to her rather breathy and singsong way of speaking I got going.

This story is about Kate, a middle aged widow who’s remarried to Dermot, about 10 years younger than her and only 10 years older than her eldest child, Tom. Her daughter, Louisa, is home for the summer from boarding school, and the household is completed by Kate’s elderly aunt Ethel, who enjoys writing gossipy letters to her friend in Devon, and the cook, who’d much rather be travelling the world.

Elizabeth Taylor’s beautiful writing style was evident from the beginning, as she dips in and out of her characters heads. I’m reminded of people-watching on the bus or in cafes, which I used to enjoy before I lost my sight; wondering what’s going on in their lives and what they might be thinking. I loved the fabulously awkward scene at the start where Kate’s in the hairdresser’s, where you get the perspective of several characters all going about their daily routine, with their own preoccupations:

“He switched on different sides of his nature, in just as long as it took him to cross the salon from one client to another, and knew when to be sympathetic, reverent, rallying or flirtatious. With Kate he expected a restful interlude. She would ask a few kind questions about his wife and baby, and his mother whose arthritis worried him, then she would pick up a magazine and turn its pages peacefully. He had some clients who watched every hairpin going in as if they were doubtful of his ability, and others who brought photographs of models and asked to be made to look the same. Kate, from her confidence in him, or her lack of interest, left herself in his hands.”

The story starts slowly and I got a little bored by Louisa and her pursuit of the village curate but the second half really picks up with the introduction of Kate’s old friend Charles and daughter Araminta (Minty). Before they return home after living in France for years (following the death of Kate’s best friend Dorothea, Charles’ wife), Kate goes to open up the house, and I really liked this little description “The armchairs looked as if they were sitting up and begging.” Kate then comes across a photo of her old friend:

“Dorothea looked uneasy in sables she had borrowed, Kate remembered, from her aunt. They seemed to be having a fight round her shoulders, jaws snapped on tails in a vicious circle, glass eyes glinting.”

This book was published in 1961 so it was quite a scandal for Kate to remarry someone  much younger, and there’s a whispered consensus around her from friends and family that it won’t last long. Dermot’s an amusing creation who’s attitude to life is very laid back, drifting from one job to the next, never sticking to anything. Kate seems very happy with the marriage for the most part, though cracks do start to appear. The tension between him, Kate and his mother Edwina was brilliantly written.

You can see the societal changes of the early 1960s here, reflected in the attitudes to sex, the fascination with TV and Minty turning out to be an aspiring model.

The ending was a bit too melodramatic and abrupt for my liking, as if she’d created mounting tension for her characters and wasn’t quite sure how to bring it to a close. I had to rewind and listen to the last section again!

I so enjoyed this novel; it’s insightful and witty, and full of period details which made me smile. Families are an endless source of conflict and inter-generational friction, something this book perfectly captures.