Scan barcode
A review by readerstephen86
Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen
4.0
SUMMARY - 20 years on since I read my only previous Bowen novel, I've been bewitched again - this novel about the 'rootless rich' (p. 191) glows with murky energy.
■○□○□○■
This is an optic novel in its attention to light and shade, just as it is a novel of opacity to the lives of Eva and her extended adopted family. Bowen's cinematic prose lights up the darkly disordered and unreachable realities of her characters. Eva feels everything surprising, and disconnected from reality. There are shafts of light when Eva makes declarations of intent to befriend or to woo, which are all too often swiftly eclipsed. I like the modernist refusal to allow narrative neatness. Eva, Constantine, Iseult, Clive, Henry and others largely don't understand one another. Letters are often written to offer disclosure, but don't arrive. In conversation, minds often struggle to escape the cranial wall, and remain in darkness to others' thoughts and feelings.
Bowen stands apart from the vast majority of novelists I've read in her ability to cast vistas, and diffuse her prose with effortless ambiance. Seeing the lake-perched castle through Eva's eyes, I felt myself breathing-in sharply chilled air. Equally, there was a vividness in the flourescent-lit city office in all its plastic artificiality; the paper-strewn vestry, or Eva's firelit twilight in her first home.
The ending (no spoiler) was to me less surprising than to Tessa Hadley, who writes the Introduction in this edition. I sped up towards the end partly because I started to anticipate the conclusion, and perhaps Eva Trout lost some of its final punchiness in consequence. Even so, there was an element of uncertainty that made this less unsatisfying in its turncoat neatness that it might have done. The clipped and occasional snipey conversation was also much less grating than say Nina Bowden's novel (shortlisted retrospectively for the follow year's Lost Booker Prize), but just occasionally breached believability even for those who knew each other.
These are among very few reasons I can give why it's not a 5 from me. The main reason is that irrepressable upwelling of feeling that I get at the end of novels I've adored. Eva Trout in its strangeness, and perhaps for its intellectually perverse intent, didn't quite prompt such devotion on a first reading. However, I would definitely re-read, and wonder if its realism could capture my heart fully on a second attempt.
Certainly the dead endings (e.gs , the love letter on the plane, or quickly forgotten impromtu school reunion in the US), far from interruptions, brought a jostling reality to the ordered chaos of unplanned human existence. Perhaps its the refreshment this brings after my recent forays into the meticulously-plotted world of Dickens, but I did love the unpredictability of the interplay between characters that never fully comprehend each other.
With the head if not fully the heart, this book is a delight. I read it more slowly than most books. Some books drag; but Bowen's prose feels like it needs to be sipped, not swallowed. Apparently Bowen was experimenting (in this late, indeed last novel), and contorted sentences to lay bare the obscurities of language and comprehension. Instead of grating, this time the circumlocutions felt playful. The language reached deep into the dictionary while, and was sometimes extraordinary, but rarely felt forced: trefoil; anglepoise; Stygian; crepitate; dewlaps; napery; dolichpcelaphic (p. 194) and superogatory (p.243). Bowen rows her course well clear of cliche.
It ia 20 years (pretty much to the month) since I read my first - and until Eva Trout - only Bowen novel, 'The Heat of the Day', as an undergraduate. Now Bowen's lucidly-illuminated work and worlds awaits for me to dive in, and I can't wait.
■○□○□○■
This is an optic novel in its attention to light and shade, just as it is a novel of opacity to the lives of Eva and her extended adopted family. Bowen's cinematic prose lights up the darkly disordered and unreachable realities of her characters. Eva feels everything surprising, and disconnected from reality. There are shafts of light when Eva makes declarations of intent to befriend or to woo, which are all too often swiftly eclipsed. I like the modernist refusal to allow narrative neatness. Eva, Constantine, Iseult, Clive, Henry and others largely don't understand one another. Letters are often written to offer disclosure, but don't arrive. In conversation, minds often struggle to escape the cranial wall, and remain in darkness to others' thoughts and feelings.
Bowen stands apart from the vast majority of novelists I've read in her ability to cast vistas, and diffuse her prose with effortless ambiance. Seeing the lake-perched castle through Eva's eyes, I felt myself breathing-in sharply chilled air. Equally, there was a vividness in the flourescent-lit city office in all its plastic artificiality; the paper-strewn vestry, or Eva's firelit twilight in her first home.
The ending (no spoiler) was to me less surprising than to Tessa Hadley, who writes the Introduction in this edition. I sped up towards the end partly because I started to anticipate the conclusion, and perhaps Eva Trout lost some of its final punchiness in consequence. Even so, there was an element of uncertainty that made this less unsatisfying in its turncoat neatness that it might have done. The clipped and occasional snipey conversation was also much less grating than say Nina Bowden's novel (shortlisted retrospectively for the follow year's Lost Booker Prize), but just occasionally breached believability even for those who knew each other.
These are among very few reasons I can give why it's not a 5 from me. The main reason is that irrepressable upwelling of feeling that I get at the end of novels I've adored. Eva Trout in its strangeness, and perhaps for its intellectually perverse intent, didn't quite prompt such devotion on a first reading. However, I would definitely re-read, and wonder if its realism could capture my heart fully on a second attempt.
Certainly the dead endings (e.gs , the love letter on the plane, or quickly forgotten impromtu school reunion in the US), far from interruptions, brought a jostling reality to the ordered chaos of unplanned human existence. Perhaps its the refreshment this brings after my recent forays into the meticulously-plotted world of Dickens, but I did love the unpredictability of the interplay between characters that never fully comprehend each other.
With the head if not fully the heart, this book is a delight. I read it more slowly than most books. Some books drag; but Bowen's prose feels like it needs to be sipped, not swallowed. Apparently Bowen was experimenting (in this late, indeed last novel), and contorted sentences to lay bare the obscurities of language and comprehension. Instead of grating, this time the circumlocutions felt playful. The language reached deep into the dictionary while, and was sometimes extraordinary, but rarely felt forced: trefoil; anglepoise; Stygian; crepitate; dewlaps; napery; dolichpcelaphic (p. 194) and superogatory (p.243). Bowen rows her course well clear of cliche.
It ia 20 years (pretty much to the month) since I read my first - and until Eva Trout - only Bowen novel, 'The Heat of the Day', as an undergraduate. Now Bowen's lucidly-illuminated work and worlds awaits for me to dive in, and I can't wait.