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The Way Out of Berkeley Square
Arabella's predicament is not without certain ironies. As hostess and hosuekeeper for her elegant and eminiently successful widowed father, she finds herself "stuck" in a luxurious home where she receives some of London's most alluring and influential people; and when she finally allows herself to fall in love, it is with a man who is "happily married" and whos avowed intentions toward her are anything but honerable. Committed to the glitter of fashionable Mayfair life, she is nonetheless intrigued by elements of Bohemia. And though money is nice, a smart new coat or hat always a ready consolation, her younger brother's letters from India (where he has fled in search of suffering and poetry) cause her to long for a world seemingly outside the range of her experiences or imaginings.
- GenresFiction
208 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1971
About the author
Rosemary Tonks
14 books60 followersRosemary Tonks (17 October 1928 – 15 April 2014) was an English poet and author. After publishing two poetry collections, six novels, and pieces in numerous media outlets, she disappeared from the public eye after her conversion to Fundamentalist Christianity in the 1970s; little was known about her life past that point, until her death.
Rosemary Desmond Boswell Tonks was born October 17, 1928 in Gillingham, Kent and was educated at Wentworth college in Bournemouth. She published children's stories while a teenager. In 1949, she married Michael Lightband (a mechanical engineer, and later a financier), and the couple moved to Karachi, where she began to write poetry. Attacks of paratyphoid, contracted in Calcutta, and of polio, contracted in Karachi, forced a return to England. She later lived briefly in Paris.
Tonks worked for the BBC, writing stories and reviewing poetry for the BBC European Service. She published poems in collections and The Observer, the New Statesman, Transatlantic Review, London Magazine, Encounter, and Poetry Review, she read on the BBC's Third Programme. She also wrote "poetic novels".
Her work appears in many anthologies, including Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (ed. Keith Tuma), Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, British Poetry since 1945, and The Firebox: Poetry in Britain and Ireland after 1945 (ed. Sean O'Brien).[citation needed]
Tonks stopped publishing poetry in the early 1970s, at about the same time as her conversion to a form of Christianity. Little was known publicly about her subsequent life past that point. As Andrew Motion wrote in 2004, she "Disappeared! What happened? Because I admire her poems, I've been trying to find out for years... no trace of her seems to survive – apart from the writing she left behind." The Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry, which published three of Tonks' poems in 2001, states that permission to use her poems was obtained from a literary agency, Sheil Land Associates, Ltd. In the 30-minute BBC Radio 4 Lost Voices documentary, "The Poet Who Vanished", broadcast March 29, 2009, Brian Patten observed, from the literary world's pespective, she'd "evaporated into air like the Cheshire cat"; Tonks had disappeared from public view and was living a hermetic existence, refusing telephone and personal calls from friends, family and the media.
Tonks' poems offer a stylised view of an urban literary subculture around 1960, full of hedonism and decadence. The poet seems to veer from the ennui of Charles Baudelaire to exuberant disbelief of modern civilisation. There are illicit love affairs in seedy hotels and scenes of café life across Europe and the Middle East; there are sage reflections on men who are shy with women. She often targets the pathetic pretensions of writers and intellectuals. Yet she is often buoyant and chatty, bemused rather than critical, even self-deprecating.
She believed poetry should look good on a printed page as well as sound good when read: "There is an excitement for the eye in a poem on the page which is completely different from the ear's reaction". Of her style, she said "I have developed a visionary modern lyric, and, for it, an idiom in which I can write lyrically, colloquially, and dramatically. My subject is city life—with its sofas, hotel corridors, cinemas, underworlds, cardboard suitcases, self-willed buses, banknotes, soapy bathrooms, newspaper-filled parks; and its anguish, its enraged excitement, its great lonely joys."
Rosemary Desmond Boswell Tonks was born October 17, 1928 in Gillingham, Kent and was educated at Wentworth college in Bournemouth. She published children's stories while a teenager. In 1949, she married Michael Lightband (a mechanical engineer, and later a financier), and the couple moved to Karachi, where she began to write poetry. Attacks of paratyphoid, contracted in Calcutta, and of polio, contracted in Karachi, forced a return to England. She later lived briefly in Paris.
Tonks worked for the BBC, writing stories and reviewing poetry for the BBC European Service. She published poems in collections and The Observer, the New Statesman, Transatlantic Review, London Magazine, Encounter, and Poetry Review, she read on the BBC's Third Programme. She also wrote "poetic novels".
Her work appears in many anthologies, including Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (ed. Keith Tuma), Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, British Poetry since 1945, and The Firebox: Poetry in Britain and Ireland after 1945 (ed. Sean O'Brien).[citation needed]
Tonks stopped publishing poetry in the early 1970s, at about the same time as her conversion to a form of Christianity. Little was known publicly about her subsequent life past that point. As Andrew Motion wrote in 2004, she "Disappeared! What happened? Because I admire her poems, I've been trying to find out for years... no trace of her seems to survive – apart from the writing she left behind." The Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry, which published three of Tonks' poems in 2001, states that permission to use her poems was obtained from a literary agency, Sheil Land Associates, Ltd. In the 30-minute BBC Radio 4 Lost Voices documentary, "The Poet Who Vanished", broadcast March 29, 2009, Brian Patten observed, from the literary world's pespective, she'd "evaporated into air like the Cheshire cat"; Tonks had disappeared from public view and was living a hermetic existence, refusing telephone and personal calls from friends, family and the media.
Tonks' poems offer a stylised view of an urban literary subculture around 1960, full of hedonism and decadence. The poet seems to veer from the ennui of Charles Baudelaire to exuberant disbelief of modern civilisation. There are illicit love affairs in seedy hotels and scenes of café life across Europe and the Middle East; there are sage reflections on men who are shy with women. She often targets the pathetic pretensions of writers and intellectuals. Yet she is often buoyant and chatty, bemused rather than critical, even self-deprecating.
She believed poetry should look good on a printed page as well as sound good when read: "There is an excitement for the eye in a poem on the page which is completely different from the ear's reaction". Of her style, she said "I have developed a visionary modern lyric, and, for it, an idiom in which I can write lyrically, colloquially, and dramatically. My subject is city life—with its sofas, hotel corridors, cinemas, underworlds, cardboard suitcases, self-willed buses, banknotes, soapy bathrooms, newspaper-filled parks; and its anguish, its enraged excitement, its great lonely joys."
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 27, 2026
3.5, rounded down.
Tonks' penultimate novel from 1970, before she disappeared for 40 years until her death in 2014, is missing the biting droll wit of the other two books of hers I've read - and it is sorely missed. The prose is still exceptional, and there ARE sentences and entire paragraphs that match anything in the others for precise and startling imagery - but it also lacks a strong narrative throughline, which is another disappointment.
Arabella seems much more of a standard issue heroine, therefore - and her dithering over whether or not to go through with an affair with a caddish married man (nicknamed the Wolf!) more pedestrian. The most interesting aspect of the book is how the author transforms her own illness from polio contracted in Karachi, into the agonies of Arabella's beloved brother, Michael.
Tonks remains a fascinating figure and her writing deserves to be wider known - but I'd suggest starting with either her final novel The Halt During the Chase or her masterwork, The Bloater.
Tonks' penultimate novel from 1970, before she disappeared for 40 years until her death in 2014, is missing the biting droll wit of the other two books of hers I've read - and it is sorely missed. The prose is still exceptional, and there ARE sentences and entire paragraphs that match anything in the others for precise and startling imagery - but it also lacks a strong narrative throughline, which is another disappointment.
Arabella seems much more of a standard issue heroine, therefore - and her dithering over whether or not to go through with an affair with a caddish married man (nicknamed the Wolf!) more pedestrian. The most interesting aspect of the book is how the author transforms her own illness from polio contracted in Karachi, into the agonies of Arabella's beloved brother, Michael.
Tonks remains a fascinating figure and her writing deserves to be wider known - but I'd suggest starting with either her final novel The Halt During the Chase or her masterwork, The Bloater.
February 23, 2015
A brilliantly quiet written novel. I never heard of Rosemary Tonks, till recently through a comment by Momus. It caught my attention, and now I'm trying to read all of her works. She is a british poet and novelist, and "The Way Out of Berkeley Square" is about a grown daughter caught in the world of her father, a married suitor, and brother, who is sick and living in India. The whole novel is seen through her eyes, and it's a great technique that we never actually see the brother - but he "lives" through his letters to his sister, and... Well, you have to read the book. It's a hardcore London book in the sense it takes place there - but it is not about locations - more about a state of mind. Excellent book.
December 31, 2012
Poignant, like Stevie Smith's novels, with a dash of nancy Mitford. Theme/situation is bird in gilded cage.
Comparisons have been made to Evelyn Waugh.
Tour de force of voice and sensibility.
The other writer who comes to mind is Anita Brookner, since the subject matter is similar.
Comparisons have been made to Evelyn Waugh.
Tour de force of voice and sensibility.
The other writer who comes to mind is Anita Brookner, since the subject matter is similar.
August 11, 2024
„Take my attitude to men. I’m unsuccessful because I always choose the type like my father, bright-eyed sportsmen with black eyebrows, big shoulders and experience, They’re the only type I’ve learnt to recognise as men. And they bully me until I get to the point when I only know it’s my duty to go to bed with someone who doesn’t like me, who bullies me and criticises me.”
Znacie to uczucie, że czytacie opis książki, wydaje się wam, że to coś totalnie super i totalnie dla was, kupujecie, podekscytowani zaczynacie, a później nagle wszystko siada i jest klapa? No to dokładnie tak było z tą książką.
Arabella ma trzydzieści lat i znajduje się w miejscu, które w ogóle jej się nie podoba. Jej ojciec ciągle stara się ją kontrolować i wymaga od niej więcej niż jest w stanie dać. Brat, który cały czas jest nieobecny, relację z bohaterką utrzymuje tylko dzięki listom, które do niej pisze. A do tego wszystkiego, Arabella zaczyna mieć romans ze starszym, żonatym mężczyzną. W całym tym zamieszaniu, bohaterka szuka swojej drogi, zastanawia się co robić i jak nie zatracić się w tych wszystkich uczuciach. Cała narracja to myśli Arabelli, jej smutki, problemy, przemyślenia, codzienność i mnóstwo pytań o to, co dalej.
To nie była zła historia, ona była po prostu nijaka. Nie wzbudziła we mnie żadnych uczuć. I chociaż bohaterka miała w sobie wszystko, co zwykle lubię, to jednak tu nie było między nami chemii, jej wszystkie uczucia i myśli to monolog, który przerósł mnie ilością słów. Szkoda, szkoda. Piękna okładka, piękny język i fajna historia, a jednak całościowo coś mi tu nie gra. Tyle.
Znacie to uczucie, że czytacie opis książki, wydaje się wam, że to coś totalnie super i totalnie dla was, kupujecie, podekscytowani zaczynacie, a później nagle wszystko siada i jest klapa? No to dokładnie tak było z tą książką.
Arabella ma trzydzieści lat i znajduje się w miejscu, które w ogóle jej się nie podoba. Jej ojciec ciągle stara się ją kontrolować i wymaga od niej więcej niż jest w stanie dać. Brat, który cały czas jest nieobecny, relację z bohaterką utrzymuje tylko dzięki listom, które do niej pisze. A do tego wszystkiego, Arabella zaczyna mieć romans ze starszym, żonatym mężczyzną. W całym tym zamieszaniu, bohaterka szuka swojej drogi, zastanawia się co robić i jak nie zatracić się w tych wszystkich uczuciach. Cała narracja to myśli Arabelli, jej smutki, problemy, przemyślenia, codzienność i mnóstwo pytań o to, co dalej.
To nie była zła historia, ona była po prostu nijaka. Nie wzbudziła we mnie żadnych uczuć. I chociaż bohaterka miała w sobie wszystko, co zwykle lubię, to jednak tu nie było między nami chemii, jej wszystkie uczucia i myśli to monolog, który przerósł mnie ilością słów. Szkoda, szkoda. Piękna okładka, piękny język i fajna historia, a jednak całościowo coś mi tu nie gra. Tyle.
April 1, 2026
4.25*
July 25, 2024
i have a sneaking suspicion that my copy is missing the last few pages which im excited to investigate but i enjoyed it either way
January 24, 2025
Mom look, my words are on the cover!
April 20, 2026
"We're moving away from the sort of truth I need. Shall I prompt him by describing how people impose on me and exploit me, while I run every day in the same deep rut, unfulfilled, and wondering whether there will ever be a life for me?"
I liked this book, and it reminded me a lot of Tonks's own THE HALT DURING THE CHASE, which she actually wrote two years after this one and which I liked just a smidge more than after reading in November! Both books are about young women in their early 30s struggling to break out of the overbearing [narcissistic] personalities of their mother/father and desperately yearning for a life of their own, while still finding it hard to break out of the comfortable though cramped life that she is used to. Unfortunately, I relate entirely too much to this conundrum in my own personal life, and so these books were both very comforting and cathartic for me to read! In this book specifically, the 30-year-old protagonist Arabella feels trapped as the housekeeper in her father's house and overwhelmed with the problems and emotional management of both her father and absent brother, but through a few different relationships, including her brother's beatnik friend (who Arabella is speaking to in the quote above) and her affair with a married man (not something I would personally do, but you do you, Arabella), she realizes that she needs a better and bigger life from the one that her overbearing family is offering her. I really enjoyed this book, and it was a quick read! (Although, if you're new to Tonks, I suggest you read THE HALT DURING THE CHASE first — it's like a slightly more evolved version of this one!)
I liked this book, and it reminded me a lot of Tonks's own THE HALT DURING THE CHASE, which she actually wrote two years after this one and which I liked just a smidge more than after reading in November! Both books are about young women in their early 30s struggling to break out of the overbearing [narcissistic] personalities of their mother/father and desperately yearning for a life of their own, while still finding it hard to break out of the comfortable though cramped life that she is used to. Unfortunately, I relate entirely too much to this conundrum in my own personal life, and so these books were both very comforting and cathartic for me to read! In this book specifically, the 30-year-old protagonist Arabella feels trapped as the housekeeper in her father's house and overwhelmed with the problems and emotional management of both her father and absent brother, but through a few different relationships, including her brother's beatnik friend (who Arabella is speaking to in the quote above) and her affair with a married man (not something I would personally do, but you do you, Arabella), she realizes that she needs a better and bigger life from the one that her overbearing family is offering her. I really enjoyed this book, and it was a quick read! (Although, if you're new to Tonks, I suggest you read THE HALT DURING THE CHASE first — it's like a slightly more evolved version of this one!)
July 28, 2024
Amusing in places, nicely observed in others, but not really my cup of tea
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews