Take a photo of a barcode or cover
enoughgaiety 's review for:
The Death of the Heart
by Elizabeth Bowen
In retrospect, probably the best new-to-me book I read in 2011. Bowen is a brilliant stylist. E.g.:
"In pauses that could but occur in the talk, Portia could almost hear Mrs. Heccomb's ideas, like chairs before a party, being rolled about and rapidly rearranged."
and
"Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One's relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain. Looking back at a repetition of empty days, one sees that monuments have sprung up. Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie: when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness."
"In pauses that could but occur in the talk, Portia could almost hear Mrs. Heccomb's ideas, like chairs before a party, being rolled about and rapidly rearranged."
and
"Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One's relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain. Looking back at a repetition of empty days, one sees that monuments have sprung up. Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie: when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness."