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A review by scarpuccia
A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor
5.0
4.5 stars.
Elizabeth Taylor can write a beautiful sentence. This novel is awash with beautiful writing. Essentially, it's a wise grown up take on romantic love. As a young girl Harriet falls in love with the elusive and unreliable Vesey, an aspiring actor and soon to depart for Oxford. I liked the split Taylor creates here between the subjective and the objective. Vesey isn't objectively very attractive as anything but a passing crush but to Harriet he personifies everything that is missing from her uneventful rural existence. He will become a powerful idea opposing the practical and fearful choices she makes. Taylor does a great job of conjuring up all the sorcery of first love. Vesey now vanishes and Harriet marries Charles, an older businessman. The narrative skips forward two decades. Harriet has a teenage daughter when Vesey makes a reappearance in her life. Not surprisingly he hasn't made much of his life. But neither is Harriet exactly enthralled with her married life. The temptation now is to try to reconnect with the past and all its glamorous wishes.
Elizabeth Taylor is tremendously wise about the compromises marriage involves and the enduring sorcery exerted on a woman by the one who got away. It's the middle-aged Harriet who plays a game of Hide and Seek with her younger self in this novel. Will she be able to find her and reconnect with her?
I'll definitely be reading more Elizabeth Taylor. And well done Virago yet again for resurrecting the reputation of a hugely talented female novelist.
Elizabeth Taylor can write a beautiful sentence. This novel is awash with beautiful writing. Essentially, it's a wise grown up take on romantic love. As a young girl Harriet falls in love with the elusive and unreliable Vesey, an aspiring actor and soon to depart for Oxford. I liked the split Taylor creates here between the subjective and the objective. Vesey isn't objectively very attractive as anything but a passing crush but to Harriet he personifies everything that is missing from her uneventful rural existence. He will become a powerful idea opposing the practical and fearful choices she makes. Taylor does a great job of conjuring up all the sorcery of first love. Vesey now vanishes and Harriet marries Charles, an older businessman. The narrative skips forward two decades. Harriet has a teenage daughter when Vesey makes a reappearance in her life. Not surprisingly he hasn't made much of his life. But neither is Harriet exactly enthralled with her married life. The temptation now is to try to reconnect with the past and all its glamorous wishes.
Elizabeth Taylor is tremendously wise about the compromises marriage involves and the enduring sorcery exerted on a woman by the one who got away. It's the middle-aged Harriet who plays a game of Hide and Seek with her younger self in this novel. Will she be able to find her and reconnect with her?
I'll definitely be reading more Elizabeth Taylor. And well done Virago yet again for resurrecting the reputation of a hugely talented female novelist.