A review by beasley
In a Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor

3.0

This is a beautifully written book. Taylor has a marvelous eye for the small telling detail and is able to shift seamlessly among the points of view of multiple characters. The actual story didn't do much for me but I can see why Taylor is admired as a writer. This novel was published and on the bestseller list in January of 1961, and there were a few interesting period touches: it was a big deal for one of the characters to buy a television, and an even bigger deal for several of the characters to watch television in the evening, instead of conversing in the drawing room or listening to classical music records; the nearness of WWII to several of the characters was also very interesting. I found myself wondering how the characters would have fared throughout the rest of the 1960s and into the 1970s and 1980s. They seemed much more grounded in the past than in the future.