About this title: In World War II London, Stella Rodney's lover, Robert Kelway, is transmitting English government documents to the Germans. Stella discovers the truth when an associate of Robert's tries to blackmail her: if she becomes his mistress, he will not reveal the truth about Robert. After Robert's death--a probable suicide--Stella tries to find the truth of Robert's life--his family, his treasonous politics, and his enigmatic death.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: A.A. Knopf
Date Published: 1949
Description: Good. ---372 pages. Hinges are cracked and loose. Interior has light pencil marks. Nice overall. -Publish Place: New York-Size: 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: A.A. Knopf
Date Published: 1949
Description: Good in Good + jacket. -Book Club (BCE/BOMC)--372 pgs. Interior-Nice overall condition. The boards and DJ have light signs of aging. -Publish Place: New York-Size: 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
"This is the third book I've read by Bowen; despite finding her somewhat distant and impenetrable, her prose is so beautifully crafted I keep going back to her. But until this book I would have said I admired rather than really liked her novels. (I have read a little of her short fiction and up to now, have liked it much better.) Anyway, this book set during the London Blitz really clicked for me in a way that the previous ones didn't quite so much--with real and heartbreaking characters and situations, passages of prose I marked to go back and reread, and a blackly comedic family scene near the end (when Robert returns home to discuss selling the family home with his mother and sister...perhaps less hilarious if you have a less blackly comic view of family life than I do). When I finished Bowen's The Death of the Heart and The House in Paris I felt like I didn't need to pick up anything else by her for a while, but this makes me anxious to move on, probably to The Last September since the setting--Ireland in the waning days of British independence--is of particular interest to me."
"One of the best books I've read this year, hands down. It's beautifully structured, and gorgeously written- not an easy read by any means, but not quite a Jamesian labyrinth either. I can't really describe it, but the book is wise, and every other good adjective you can think of. "There was nobody to admire: there *was* no alternative. No unextinguished watch-light remained, after all, burning in any window, however far away. In hopes of what, then, was one led on, led on? How long, looking back on it, it had lasted - that dogged, timid, unfaithfully-followed hope!" This is probably the perfect antidote to all the flag-waving and hurrahing and so on that surrounds the second world war, and maybe even our own petty little political squabbles."
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