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At Mrs Lippincote's
Alternate Cover Edition for ISBN10: 1844083098 (ISBN13: 9781844083091
Mrs. Lippincote's house, with its heavy furniture and yellowing photographs, stands for all the certainties that have vanished with the advent of war. And, temporarily, it is home for Julia. Regarded as a most unsatisfactory officer's wife, Julia has joined her husband Roddy at the behest of the RAF, along with her young son and Roddy's cousin Eleanor. The novel depicts all the hypocrisies and evasions inherent in marriage as the household undergoes the chance encounters and social flux of the war years.
Mrs. Lippincote's house, with its heavy furniture and yellowing photographs, stands for all the certainties that have vanished with the advent of war. And, temporarily, it is home for Julia. Regarded as a most unsatisfactory officer's wife, Julia has joined her husband Roddy at the behest of the RAF, along with her young son and Roddy's cousin Eleanor. The novel depicts all the hypocrisies and evasions inherent in marriage as the household undergoes the chance encounters and social flux of the war years.
236 pages, Paperback
First published July 31, 1945
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About the author
Elizabeth Taylor
69 books520 followersElizabeth Taylor (née Coles) was a popular English novelist and short story writer. Elizabeth Coles was born in Reading, Berkshire in 1912. She was educated at The Abbey School, Reading, and worked as a governess, as a tutor and as a librarian.
In 1936, she married John William Kendall Taylor, a businessman. She lived in Penn, Buckinghamshire, for almost all her married life.
Her first novel, At Mrs. Lippincote's, was published in 1945 and was followed by eleven more. Her short stories were published in various magazines and collected in four volumes. She also wrote a children's book.
Taylor's work is mainly concerned with the nuances of "everyday" life and situations, which she writes about with dexterity. Her shrewd but affectionate portrayals of middle class and upper middle class English life won her an audience of discriminating readers, as well as loyal friends in the world of letters.
She was a friend of the novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett and of the novelist and critic Robert Liddell.
Elizabeth Taylor died at age 63 of cancer.
Anne Tyler once compared Taylor to Jane Austen, Barbara Pym and Elizabeth Bowen -- "soul sisters all," in Tyler's words . In recent years new interest has been kindled by movie makers in her work. French director Francois Ozon, has made "The Real Life of Angel Deverell" which will be released in early 2005. American director Dan Ireland's screen adaptation of Taylor's "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont" came out in this country first in 2006 and has made close to $1 million. A British distributor picked it up at Cannes, and the movie was released in England in 2009.
In 1936, she married John William Kendall Taylor, a businessman. She lived in Penn, Buckinghamshire, for almost all her married life.
Her first novel, At Mrs. Lippincote's, was published in 1945 and was followed by eleven more. Her short stories were published in various magazines and collected in four volumes. She also wrote a children's book.
Taylor's work is mainly concerned with the nuances of "everyday" life and situations, which she writes about with dexterity. Her shrewd but affectionate portrayals of middle class and upper middle class English life won her an audience of discriminating readers, as well as loyal friends in the world of letters.
She was a friend of the novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett and of the novelist and critic Robert Liddell.
Elizabeth Taylor died at age 63 of cancer.
Anne Tyler once compared Taylor to Jane Austen, Barbara Pym and Elizabeth Bowen -- "soul sisters all," in Tyler's words . In recent years new interest has been kindled by movie makers in her work. French director Francois Ozon, has made "The Real Life of Angel Deverell" which will be released in early 2005. American director Dan Ireland's screen adaptation of Taylor's "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont" came out in this country first in 2006 and has made close to $1 million. A British distributor picked it up at Cannes, and the movie was released in England in 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 164 reviews
January 25, 2022
What I found most extraordinary about this novel is that it was written during the war, in 1945, and yet it keeps the war somewhat in the background. There is a feeling of necessity in the setting, but the circumstances remain hazy. A novel written after the war (entering the genre of historical fiction) would have brought the military situation to the fore. We have to ponder that for Taylor and her contemporaries, having endured war for a few years already, life of a sort had to continue (air raids became a matter like taking snuff or smoking; to be indulged in or given up as one might think wise). Attention had to focus on preparing egg sandwiches for the train.
Nevertheless, in At Mrs Lippencote’s, people are displaced, and homeowners are pushed out of their houses to accommodate the officers of the RAF. Disruption of lives. Mrs Lippencotte’s house becomes a cage in which a loveless, but not necessarily unhappy, marriage and an appendage in the shape of a cousin, are artificially implanted.
The novel, the first by Taylor, and supposedly autobiographical (although Taylor remained very private throughout her life and little is known about her), presents through a succession of scenes thinly held together by a thin plot, a gallery of personalities. The least interesting is the one who supposedly leads the family, Roddy Davenant. His cousin Eleanor seeks her place in life, and thinks she found it in the political left. Oliver the bookish child is endearing is the way he “snuffs books up”. And Julia (Elizabeth’s alter ego?), Mrs Davenant, is a rich and fascinating character trapped in the role of the wife. But she knows this, though, and tries to live shaking off this mantle from time to time (I am doing something for myself alone... no one else has the tiniest part in it)
This is my second novel by Taylor. If I am going to read more than one work by a writer, I prefer to follow a vague chronological order, but this time I began at the end with Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont and then jumped back to the first one. I wish to read more of hers and fill in the time gap.
January 5, 2020
This was Elizabeth Taylor's first novel and is my least favourite of the books of hers I've read. There was both too much and not enough going on for me. A young family move into a stranger's house on the English coast because of the husband's RAF posting (it's towards the end of the war though this barely features). It was hard for me to sympathise with any of the adult characters. The best theme of the book was how adults through selfishness, immaturity and emotional cowardice can derail the lives of children. This was dramatized really well through the friendship of young Oliver and Felicity. The book's major failure for me was the character of Eleanor, a spinster, who flirts with a clandestine group of communists. It's very much a man's world Taylor depicts where the women struggle to find any independent voice and the children suffer. I'd give it about 3.5 stars.
January 25, 2022
I loved this, and I think one of the pleasures lies in all those astute observations that Taylor gives us access to; all those "small" feelings and thoughts that most people dismiss as unimportant and certainly not worthy of discussing with others.
This is Julia: She could not think why she had not gone herself, especially as she was frightened always of being in a house alone. Sometimes, she thought , that it was this thing, this one terror, which forced her to endure Eleanor's living with them. It was safe enough sitting out here in the garden, nothing could harm her, but in the house, with the light beginning to fail, there was always the fear not of the room in which she sat but of the other rooms where she could not be and which, once it was dark she could hardly bring herself to visit.
And then of course there is Taylor's wry and superb sense of humour. There were so many times that I either chuckled to myself or laughed outright or I had a delayed reaction - "Oh yes, oh yes - I get it". Ha!! I love this kind of writing.
And of course wrapped up in Taylor's natural conversations are those subtle but complex shifts telling us a great deal about the relationships between her characters: here is a snippet of a longer conversation between husband and wife, Roddy and Julia. Roddy has just exerted his manly sense of authority by squashing a wasp.
"What a monster he is!" said Julia, and it was then that Roddy squashed it and Julia said, "Oh, no!" So she punished him by reserving some pleasing information until she had finished stacking up a pile of flower-pots according to size. Then she said: "The Wing-Commander's wife came in to see Oliver this afternoon."
"That was very decent of her."
"Yes. They had a good talk about The Wide, Wide World. I think it is the only book she ever read, so it was lucky."
Oliver is their son, 7 years old, who must be one of the most charming characters in all fiction. When we are first introduced to him he is reading 'Jane Eyre' and in the process of walking around the new neighbourhood describes his environment as if he were Jane. The local girls school becomes Lowood - I loved this escapism of not just the child, but the way in which Taylor involves us, the reader in the child's imagination. And the whole idea is continued, when the Wing Commander makes his appearance. Julia immediately tells him that he looks like Mr Rochester and asks if she can introduce him to Oliver, who is ill in bed at the time. This absorption in books is part of Julia's background and much of her relationship with her son is through their shared pleasure in books. But there is nothing stuffy or forced about this joint interest.
In the afternoon Julia sat down with her knitting and a copy of Kidnapped which she began to read to Oliver with an enthusiastic Scots accent, running sometimes into a Rhondda Valley lilt, or at others into a sly County Cork drawl. When she could read no longer, they played cards.
There are so many good things to say about this book. There is a theme of course; the subtle joys which form the basis of our central characters, Julia and Oliver are contrasted against the stern, and inflexible attitudes of Roddy and of course the rather despicable Eleanor. There is a whole cast of minor characters as well; Corporal Crook for instance who enjoys several interrogations by the children, and Mrs Whapshott, who helps to explain the presence of Miss Phyllis, Mrs' Lippincote's daughter - and the contrasting cast of Vasco Road: Sarge and Vera, Leo, who cannot speak and Kirsty. They are "communists" sharing a house together and their work involves lectures and meetings. I was less interested in this group of characters, but it allows Taylor to broaden out her cast from the intimate family members to take in the real-world setting, of the last year of the war, in which the novel is set. There is also the very realistic story of Mr Taylor, who has lost his high-class restaurant in London, because of the bombs, and is now working as a waiter in the local hotel where the officers of the RAF hang out.
This is only my second Elizabeth Taylor but she includes so many delightful elements that I want to read everything - even the gruesome 'Angel' which I tried a half-dozen years ago. I will finish with this bit of a paragraph, which I think gives the uninitiated a good idea of the delights awaiting:
The disintegration of the house resulted from neglect, from the accumulation of jobs to be done to-morrow. Cupboards and dark corners there were which Julia avoided, which she felt she could never clear out. For the first week, daily expecting Mrs Lippincote to call, she had thought the excuse of having just moved in would cover most deficiencies, but Mrs Lippincote had not come and the excuse which was dead was needed more than ever now.
This is Julia: She could not think why she had not gone herself, especially as she was frightened always of being in a house alone. Sometimes, she thought , that it was this thing, this one terror, which forced her to endure Eleanor's living with them. It was safe enough sitting out here in the garden, nothing could harm her, but in the house, with the light beginning to fail, there was always the fear not of the room in which she sat but of the other rooms where she could not be and which, once it was dark she could hardly bring herself to visit.
And then of course there is Taylor's wry and superb sense of humour. There were so many times that I either chuckled to myself or laughed outright or I had a delayed reaction - "Oh yes, oh yes - I get it". Ha!! I love this kind of writing.
And of course wrapped up in Taylor's natural conversations are those subtle but complex shifts telling us a great deal about the relationships between her characters: here is a snippet of a longer conversation between husband and wife, Roddy and Julia. Roddy has just exerted his manly sense of authority by squashing a wasp.
"What a monster he is!" said Julia, and it was then that Roddy squashed it and Julia said, "Oh, no!" So she punished him by reserving some pleasing information until she had finished stacking up a pile of flower-pots according to size. Then she said: "The Wing-Commander's wife came in to see Oliver this afternoon."
"That was very decent of her."
"Yes. They had a good talk about The Wide, Wide World. I think it is the only book she ever read, so it was lucky."
Oliver is their son, 7 years old, who must be one of the most charming characters in all fiction. When we are first introduced to him he is reading 'Jane Eyre' and in the process of walking around the new neighbourhood describes his environment as if he were Jane. The local girls school becomes Lowood - I loved this escapism of not just the child, but the way in which Taylor involves us, the reader in the child's imagination. And the whole idea is continued, when the Wing Commander makes his appearance. Julia immediately tells him that he looks like Mr Rochester and asks if she can introduce him to Oliver, who is ill in bed at the time. This absorption in books is part of Julia's background and much of her relationship with her son is through their shared pleasure in books. But there is nothing stuffy or forced about this joint interest.
In the afternoon Julia sat down with her knitting and a copy of Kidnapped which she began to read to Oliver with an enthusiastic Scots accent, running sometimes into a Rhondda Valley lilt, or at others into a sly County Cork drawl. When she could read no longer, they played cards.
There are so many good things to say about this book. There is a theme of course; the subtle joys which form the basis of our central characters, Julia and Oliver are contrasted against the stern, and inflexible attitudes of Roddy and of course the rather despicable Eleanor. There is a whole cast of minor characters as well; Corporal Crook for instance who enjoys several interrogations by the children, and Mrs Whapshott, who helps to explain the presence of Miss Phyllis, Mrs' Lippincote's daughter - and the contrasting cast of Vasco Road: Sarge and Vera, Leo, who cannot speak and Kirsty. They are "communists" sharing a house together and their work involves lectures and meetings. I was less interested in this group of characters, but it allows Taylor to broaden out her cast from the intimate family members to take in the real-world setting, of the last year of the war, in which the novel is set. There is also the very realistic story of Mr Taylor, who has lost his high-class restaurant in London, because of the bombs, and is now working as a waiter in the local hotel where the officers of the RAF hang out.
This is only my second Elizabeth Taylor but she includes so many delightful elements that I want to read everything - even the gruesome 'Angel' which I tried a half-dozen years ago. I will finish with this bit of a paragraph, which I think gives the uninitiated a good idea of the delights awaiting:
The disintegration of the house resulted from neglect, from the accumulation of jobs to be done to-morrow. Cupboards and dark corners there were which Julia avoided, which she felt she could never clear out. For the first week, daily expecting Mrs Lippincote to call, she had thought the excuse of having just moved in would cover most deficiencies, but Mrs Lippincote had not come and the excuse which was dead was needed more than ever now.
August 31, 2018
This is Taylor’s first novel, published in 1945 and is a closely observed portrait of family life during the war, although the war is very much in the background. Roddy Davenant, his wife Julia and young son Oliver and Roddy’s cousin Eleanor move from London s Roddy has been posted away from London (he is in the RAF). They rent a house from a widow called Mrs Lippincote (hence the title). It still contains all her furniture and many personal possessions. The novel charts their life in the house.
It isn’t a happy marriage: Roddy is a conventional man, however he has realised that Julia isn’t quite what he expected:
“She exasperated him. Society necessarily has a great many little rules, especially relating to the behaviour of women. One accepted them and life ran smoothly and without embarrassment, or as far as that is possible where there are two sexes. Without the little rules, everything became queer and unsafe. When he had married Julia, he had thought her woefully ignorant of the world; had looked forward, indeed, to assisting in her development. But she had been grown up all the time; or, at least, she had not changed. The root of the trouble was not ignorance at all, but the refusal to accept. ‘If only she would!’ he thought now, staring at her; ‘If only she would accept.’ The room was between them. She stood there smiling, blinking still in the bright light. He was still fanning the air peevishly with his hand.”
Eleanor adores her cousin Roddy and rather disapproves of Julia. She is an interesting character as she becomes involved with a group of Marxists and Communists in the town, they provide an interesting counterpoint to the Davenant household. Eleanor is accepted by the group and treated as a person in her own right. All of the secondary characters are well developed and this is one of the strengths of the novel. Roddy and Julia’s son Oliver with his bookishness. The wing commander (Roddy’s boss) with his growing affection for Julia, Eleanor’s various friends and others. Oliver would have loved this site:
“Oliver Davenant did not merely read books. He snuffed them up, took breaths of them into his lungs, filled his eyes with the sight of the print and his head with the sound of the words. Some emanation from the book itself poured into his bones, as if he were absorbing steady sunshine. The pages had personality. He was of the kind who cannot have a horrifying book in the room at night. He would, in fine weather, lay it upon an outside sill and close the window. Often Julia would see a book lying on his doormat.”
Julia for me is still the most interesting character in the book. She knows the situation between herself and Roddy much more clearly than she intimates throughout the book and she begins to show an independence that shocks Roddy, who is shown to be hypocritical and Julia begins to care less about some of the conventions Roddy holds dear:
“Julia had a strange gift of coming to a situation freshly, peculiarly untarnished by preconceived ideas, whether of her own preconception or the world’s. Could she have taken for granted a few of those generalizations invented by men and largely acquiesced in by women (that women live by their hearts, men by their heads, that love is a woman’s whole existence, and especially that sons should respect their fathers), she would have eased her own life and other people’s.”
Taylor is a sharp and perceptive novelist who dissects her characters and shows their true colours mercilessly but with some affection. This is a character driven novel, very little out of the ordinary actually happens. Everyday life is on show, laid bare. It is everyday life under the stresses of war; hardly on show, but ever present.
Oh and there are a few Bronte sidelines as well:
“Julia lit a cigarette and picked up Oliver’s books from his chair. “I haven’t read Jane Eyre for years, have you, Eleanor? There’s something about those girls that gives me the creeps.”
“What girls? Oh, Brontë girls!””
I’m looking forward to reading more Taylor
It isn’t a happy marriage: Roddy is a conventional man, however he has realised that Julia isn’t quite what he expected:
“She exasperated him. Society necessarily has a great many little rules, especially relating to the behaviour of women. One accepted them and life ran smoothly and without embarrassment, or as far as that is possible where there are two sexes. Without the little rules, everything became queer and unsafe. When he had married Julia, he had thought her woefully ignorant of the world; had looked forward, indeed, to assisting in her development. But she had been grown up all the time; or, at least, she had not changed. The root of the trouble was not ignorance at all, but the refusal to accept. ‘If only she would!’ he thought now, staring at her; ‘If only she would accept.’ The room was between them. She stood there smiling, blinking still in the bright light. He was still fanning the air peevishly with his hand.”
Eleanor adores her cousin Roddy and rather disapproves of Julia. She is an interesting character as she becomes involved with a group of Marxists and Communists in the town, they provide an interesting counterpoint to the Davenant household. Eleanor is accepted by the group and treated as a person in her own right. All of the secondary characters are well developed and this is one of the strengths of the novel. Roddy and Julia’s son Oliver with his bookishness. The wing commander (Roddy’s boss) with his growing affection for Julia, Eleanor’s various friends and others. Oliver would have loved this site:
“Oliver Davenant did not merely read books. He snuffed them up, took breaths of them into his lungs, filled his eyes with the sight of the print and his head with the sound of the words. Some emanation from the book itself poured into his bones, as if he were absorbing steady sunshine. The pages had personality. He was of the kind who cannot have a horrifying book in the room at night. He would, in fine weather, lay it upon an outside sill and close the window. Often Julia would see a book lying on his doormat.”
Julia for me is still the most interesting character in the book. She knows the situation between herself and Roddy much more clearly than she intimates throughout the book and she begins to show an independence that shocks Roddy, who is shown to be hypocritical and Julia begins to care less about some of the conventions Roddy holds dear:
“Julia had a strange gift of coming to a situation freshly, peculiarly untarnished by preconceived ideas, whether of her own preconception or the world’s. Could she have taken for granted a few of those generalizations invented by men and largely acquiesced in by women (that women live by their hearts, men by their heads, that love is a woman’s whole existence, and especially that sons should respect their fathers), she would have eased her own life and other people’s.”
Taylor is a sharp and perceptive novelist who dissects her characters and shows their true colours mercilessly but with some affection. This is a character driven novel, very little out of the ordinary actually happens. Everyday life is on show, laid bare. It is everyday life under the stresses of war; hardly on show, but ever present.
Oh and there are a few Bronte sidelines as well:
“Julia lit a cigarette and picked up Oliver’s books from his chair. “I haven’t read Jane Eyre for years, have you, Eleanor? There’s something about those girls that gives me the creeps.”
“What girls? Oh, Brontë girls!””
I’m looking forward to reading more Taylor
September 1, 2018
This was Elizabeth Taylor's first novel, and it is a very accomplished and enjoyable debut. This was my third Taylor novel after Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont and A Wreath of Roses, and I look forward to reading more.
Set during the Second World War, it centres on Julia, the wife of RAF officer Roddy. They are lodged in the house of the widow Mrs Lippincote in an unnamed provincial town. They share the house with their 7 year old son Oliver and Roddy's spinster cousin Eleanor.
Julia is frustrated by the social expectations of her role as an officer's wife, and much of the book is a comedy of manners. The writing is sharp and perceptive throughout, making this a pleasure to read.
Set during the Second World War, it centres on Julia, the wife of RAF officer Roddy. They are lodged in the house of the widow Mrs Lippincote in an unnamed provincial town. They share the house with their 7 year old son Oliver and Roddy's spinster cousin Eleanor.
Julia is frustrated by the social expectations of her role as an officer's wife, and much of the book is a comedy of manners. The writing is sharp and perceptive throughout, making this a pleasure to read.
July 30, 2019
In the beginning I expected this book to be like Pym's Jane and Prudence, as both take place in English villages in basically the same time period; and employ two female characters who are very different from each other: one an 'unsatisfactory' wife, according to the standards of the time; the other a spinster. Each work also references famous British literature; here, it is that of the Brontes.
But despite these surface similarities, there is something very different in their tones that makes them very different books. Taylor's is not as cozy, more acerbic, and much more 'political' in her personal, probably even daring for the time, I would think. This, Taylor's first book appeared in 1945, while Pym's J & P (her 3rd novel) was published in 1953.
While both are well-written and I'm giving them the same rating, there is a dreariness in Taylor's novel that isn't in Pym's book (since I started with that comparison, I'll continue), making Pym's more appealing. But, then again, in Taylor's there is a complexity that I enjoyed that I don't remember finding in the Pym. I plan on reading more by both of them.
But despite these surface similarities, there is something very different in their tones that makes them very different books. Taylor's is not as cozy, more acerbic, and much more 'political' in her personal, probably even daring for the time, I would think. This, Taylor's first book appeared in 1945, while Pym's J & P (her 3rd novel) was published in 1953.
While both are well-written and I'm giving them the same rating, there is a dreariness in Taylor's novel that isn't in Pym's book (since I started with that comparison, I'll continue), making Pym's more appealing. But, then again, in Taylor's there is a complexity that I enjoyed that I don't remember finding in the Pym. I plan on reading more by both of them.
October 14, 2024
This was Taylor's first novel and not quite as sophisticated and "finished" as her later work. The story lacked a bit of finesse for me, but the inner dialogue and sparking comments of her characters made this a win. Julia, Eleanor and Oliver especially.
Julia and her husband Roddy are posted to a small village just as the war has ended. They are joined by Roddy's cousin Eleanor, an unhappy spinster, and their 7 year old delicate son Oliver. The four of them are renting Mrs. Lippincote's big house.
The story plays out over the course of a few months that signal a change for all of them. While not as well loved by me it still contained all the sly wit and humor that she exhibited in later novels. It also proved that she had a deft hand at portraying children as they really are. Oliver had all the best lines.
Julia and her husband Roddy are posted to a small village just as the war has ended. They are joined by Roddy's cousin Eleanor, an unhappy spinster, and their 7 year old delicate son Oliver. The four of them are renting Mrs. Lippincote's big house.
The story plays out over the course of a few months that signal a change for all of them. While not as well loved by me it still contained all the sly wit and humor that she exhibited in later novels. It also proved that she had a deft hand at portraying children as they really are. Oliver had all the best lines.
May 8, 2017
"'Lucky for us Emily [Bronte] was not a man,' said Julia, 'or she might have drank herself to death at the Black Bull. It was better to write Wuthering Heights, but she really had no choice. Men are not forced to turn their desolation to advantage as women are. It's easier for them to despise their passion, quell their restlessness in other ways. The Bronte girls just couldn't slip down to the pub. So they had to take to writing.'"
After reading The End on the last page of this little gem, I'm tempted to turn right back to the beginning and reread it...making sure to note this detail and that one. I think it's safe to say that Elizabeth Taylor is now a favorite author of mine. All of her wit, sarcasm, and humor are just so well written into her books. I can just see her sitting in a corner at a lively party jotting down sly observations about the guests, and wishing more than ever to be at home curled up by the fire with a book.
Julia, the protagonist of At Mrs Lippincote's, is an intelligent, outgoing woman who can't live up to her RAF husband's idea of a quiet, mild-tempered woman. She's extremely well-read, can see all his flaws and still love him, but refuses to idolize him. She's not particularly handy with an iron, doesn't mind serving tinned sardines and two-day old egg sandwiches to her husband after a hard day's work, and has never really got the upper hand on dirty dishes. It doesn't help that her husband's single cousin Eleanor lives with them, and seems all too eager to take on Julia's role.
I have yet to read a book where the mother and son relationship is explored so quietly and brilliantly. Julia's seven year-old son, Oliver, is a delight to read about. Julia's instilled a love of reading in him, and together they explore her favorite childhood authors like Robert Lewis Stevens, the Bronte sisters, and Johann David Wyss.
Written in 1945, I loved the detail she gave to the rental house the Davenant's live in. It's a time capsule of a bygone era. Of course there are copious amounts of tea, bread and butter fingers, gingerbread and literary references. My favorite is the following conversation over a lackadaisical dinner Julia's prepared for her husband's boss:
"These baked apples are very good,' said the Wing Commander.
'I had the recipe from Villette. I like to get my recipes from good literature,' Julia explained.
'It takes a woman novelist to describe a dish of food.'
'If we invert that, what a prodigious novelist Mrs Beeton would have been,' said Roddy.
'Oh, I agree,' said Julia, 'but it isn't often true. Remember how it is always mutton in Jane Austen. I can't recall them eating anything else. Oh, gruel, of course...'
'One of the best meals I ever ate in my imagination was the Boeuf en daube in To the Lighthouse,' said Julia. 'I see it now and smell it–the great earthenware dish and its' (she closed her eyes and breathed slowly) 'its confusion of savory brown and yellow meats, and its bayleaves and its wine.'"
July 3, 2017
I've had mixed success with Taylor before: I liked The Blush, a volume of short stories, and was less enthralled by In a Summer Season. I wasn't sure whether I would like this, Taylor's first novel, in which a military family comes to live in a rented house during World War II.
Married to a proper officer, Julia Davenant tries to behave as a proper officer's wife ought, yet she has a basic directness and disregard for social convention which trip her up. She forms a friendship with Roddy's commanding officer which begins with their mutual love of the Brontes, and she persists in seeing Mr. Taylor, a former restaurateur now dying slowly (of a cause I never quite caught), both relationships which make straitlaced Roddy uncomfortable. Yet in the end, her honest, sensitive character is the admirable one.
In the book's foreword, Taylor admits to rewriting a great deal, "so that sometimes a sentence in its evolution takes a whole page of scratching out." But all this labor doesn't show in her prose, which is elegant and lucid, precise and thoughtful. It's a quiet book, with a quiet plot, yet the characterization and writing are so deft that it's absorbing.
Married to a proper officer, Julia Davenant tries to behave as a proper officer's wife ought, yet she has a basic directness and disregard for social convention which trip her up. She forms a friendship with Roddy's commanding officer which begins with their mutual love of the Brontes, and she persists in seeing Mr. Taylor, a former restaurateur now dying slowly (of a cause I never quite caught), both relationships which make straitlaced Roddy uncomfortable. Yet in the end, her honest, sensitive character is the admirable one.
In the book's foreword, Taylor admits to rewriting a great deal, "so that sometimes a sentence in its evolution takes a whole page of scratching out." But all this labor doesn't show in her prose, which is elegant and lucid, precise and thoughtful. It's a quiet book, with a quiet plot, yet the characterization and writing are so deft that it's absorbing.
May 18, 2016
New tenants arrive at Mrs Lippincote's home. Julia, Roddy and their young son Oliver breathe fresh life into rooms cluttered with past memories. Roddy is conscientious and with a recent RAF posting he is anxious to impress. Julia struggles with the restrictions placed upon her life and she becomes gently antagonistic and rebellious.
Elizabeth Taylor manages to convey the very soul of a person with a deft, sensitive flair. Her writing illuminates so much in its thoughtful simplicity.
Oliver imagines his world coloured with both fact and fiction. Taylor has a gift for writing children as they encounter and try to understand. Delightful references to novels and authors throughout the book add a lovely charm. A beautifully written story.
Elizabeth Taylor manages to convey the very soul of a person with a deft, sensitive flair. Her writing illuminates so much in its thoughtful simplicity.
Oliver imagines his world coloured with both fact and fiction. Taylor has a gift for writing children as they encounter and try to understand. Delightful references to novels and authors throughout the book add a lovely charm. A beautifully written story.
November 21, 2022
3.5 stars
This is Taylor's first novel and it does lack some of the clarity, sharpness and precision of her later books though we can already see the roots of themes and vocal qualities that come to fruition in her later books.
Set towards the end of WW2 and somewhere outside London, this books offers up a portrait of an unsatisfactory marriage: Julia has bohemian tendencies and a lack of respect for 'the rules' that are supposed to shape her as a woman; while her husband, Roddy, wants her to obey the conventions and to be proper and personality-free. The tensions are niggles rather than big dramas but Taylor's accomplishment is in showing how it's precisely these everyday annoyances and grumbles that undermine their marital relationship whether it's the way Julia chats to Roddy's boss or how he refuses to take any responsibility for their young son, Oliver.
Taylor has fun with literary references, mostly from nineteenth century classics, whether that's from the Brontes or the local Miss Havisham-alike character. This foregrounds the way books and an imaginative sensibility draws people together: from Oliver to the Wing Commander.
Alongside this main plot, though, is a secondary strand featuring Eleanor, Roddy's cousin, and a group of Marxist communists who she befriends; and a sudden revelation at the end that upturns everything we thought we knew. I can't help feeling that the more mature Taylor would have integrated these ideas more smoothly and not left us a bit stranded by the end.
Nevertheless, this has a discreet feminist sensibility that articulates the way domesticity and the not-quite-eponymous house are still being used to shape gender expectations and the limitations set upon women (Julia has to ask Roddy's permission to go out for a walk!) even while the war is changing the parameters with women in the RAF and being political activists - and there's a nice Taylor-esque moment when a man asks Julia if she's a suffragette and she snaps back that her mother was!
I'd say this is more conventional than Taylor's later books but Julia already has the germs of a slight eccentricity that Taylor's later heroines embrace more closely. With its subtle and waspish humour and a close attention to the way people rub up against each other, this is a debut novel that promises the development Taylor goes on to make her own.
I never wanted to be a Madame Bovary. That way for ever - literature teaches us as much, if life doesn't - lies disillusion and destruction. I would rather be a good mother, a fairly good wife, and at peace.
This is Taylor's first novel and it does lack some of the clarity, sharpness and precision of her later books though we can already see the roots of themes and vocal qualities that come to fruition in her later books.
Set towards the end of WW2 and somewhere outside London, this books offers up a portrait of an unsatisfactory marriage: Julia has bohemian tendencies and a lack of respect for 'the rules' that are supposed to shape her as a woman; while her husband, Roddy, wants her to obey the conventions and to be proper and personality-free. The tensions are niggles rather than big dramas but Taylor's accomplishment is in showing how it's precisely these everyday annoyances and grumbles that undermine their marital relationship whether it's the way Julia chats to Roddy's boss or how he refuses to take any responsibility for their young son, Oliver.
Taylor has fun with literary references, mostly from nineteenth century classics, whether that's from the Brontes or the local Miss Havisham-alike character. This foregrounds the way books and an imaginative sensibility draws people together: from Oliver to the Wing Commander.
Alongside this main plot, though, is a secondary strand featuring Eleanor, Roddy's cousin, and a group of Marxist communists who she befriends; and a sudden revelation at the end that upturns everything we thought we knew. I can't help feeling that the more mature Taylor would have integrated these ideas more smoothly and not left us a bit stranded by the end.
Nevertheless, this has a discreet feminist sensibility that articulates the way domesticity and the not-quite-eponymous house are still being used to shape gender expectations and the limitations set upon women (Julia has to ask Roddy's permission to go out for a walk!) even while the war is changing the parameters with women in the RAF and being political activists - and there's a nice Taylor-esque moment when a man asks Julia if she's a suffragette and she snaps back that her mother was!
I'd say this is more conventional than Taylor's later books but Julia already has the germs of a slight eccentricity that Taylor's later heroines embrace more closely. With its subtle and waspish humour and a close attention to the way people rub up against each other, this is a debut novel that promises the development Taylor goes on to make her own.
August 31, 2018
Rating: 2.5
“Society necessarily has a great many little rules, especially relating to the behaviour of women. One accepted them and life ran smoothly and without embarrassment, or as far as that is possible where there are two sexes. Without the little rules, everything became queer and unsafe.”
It is unclear precisely where and when Taylor’s first novel is set, but the reader knows it is somewhere in England and just before the end of World War II, as Roddy, the military-officer husband of 30-ish Julia Davenant—the central character—is apparently at no risk of being posted. Nevertheless, the war has had some impact. Julia and Roddy, their coddled and somewhat sickly son, Oliver, and Roddy’s 4O-year-old cousin, Eleanor, have had to move house. It’s a damp and gloomy place they’ve come to, apparently near a military base or headquarters, and it belongs to a Mrs. Lippincote. Julia is quite displeased with the situation: There is “no home of one’s own, no servant, no soup tureen, no solid phalanx of sisters; merely . . . an envious and critical cousin-in-law.” We are led to believe from the start that Julia is generally restless, dissatisfied, impulsive, and possibly spoiled.
Eleanor gets almost as much attention from the author as Julia, and makes an effective contrast. The Davenants apparently took her in when she had a breakdown, which first involved the losing of her voice and then alopecia: “one’s hair falling out in great patches” she tells someone, who’d probably prefer not to know. Eleanor is dissatisfied, too, but for different reasons than Julia. She’s a lonely spinster “in love with her cousin, for whom, as they say, she would have laid down her life with every satisfaction.” She’s certain that she would have made Rodney a far superior wife to the lightweight, capricious Julia. Before Eleanor meets Mr. Aldridge, a man who does carpentry lessons at the Montessori school where she teaches, she spends her evenings writing letters to a POW. She’s never met him, but represents him to others as “a dear friend” and in her correspondence addresses him as a lover. Once Mr. Aldridge, a communist-party member, is on the scene, however, Eleanor attempts to find community among the odd assortment of characters who regularly and informally meet above a grocer’s shop. She doesn’t, of course, have any commitment to the cause.
Like many other of Taylor’s female characters—I’ve come to learn—Julia’s ideas about what life should deliver have come from novels. Ruined by reading, no wonder she’s dissatisfied and inclined to flirtation with her husband’s wing commander, coquettishly suggesting to the older man (who takes an unusual interest in her) that he’s a sort of Mr. Rochester figure. She also rears her precocious seven-year-old son on the literature she grew up on, much to the irritation of her husband, who pronounces: “You and Oliver both read too much.” In addition, Julia has rather unusual friendships, one with an ailing waiter; another with a clergyman—a nephew of Mrs. Lippincote herself, and a third with a young corporal.
Mrs. Lippincote and her slightly mad daughter, Miss Phyllis, mostly hover in the background of the story. The latter sneaks into the house while the Davenants live there and climbs the stairs to a tower room, where she fondles her mother’s ancient wedding dress and handles other fashion accessories from years gone by. ( Jane Eyre is a touchstone text in this book and there are other gothic effects. There are also references to Freud and Virginia Woolf. The mix of these elements is a bit messy.)
Among the topics Taylor concerns herself with in this piece are the double standard in marriage and women’s roles in general. She’s also interested in the question of what people are prepared to put up with in close relationships. Often what they think they’ve kept hidden from others is not hidden after all.
Not surprisingly, Taylor’s protagonist can’t cook. She struggles with the upkeep of the large house, doesn’t compile lists to stay organized, and possibly likes to drink too much—or so says a “concerned” Eleanor to Julia’s husband. When he married Julia, Roddy, believed her “woefully ignorant of the world [and] . . . had looked forward, indeed, to assisting in her development. But she had been grown up all the time; or, at least, she had not changed. The root of all the trouble was not ignorance at all, but the refusal to accept [all the little rules pertaining to the behaviour of women].” Taylor is perhaps too staid a writer to create mid-twentieth century Nora Helmer. Julia might chafe at the constraints of her marriage, but she’s neither sufficiently troubled nor dynamic enough to leave it. She’s pragmatic. No Ibsenesque epiphany and dramatic departure for her; it’s quite enough of an escape to take a solitary evening walk away from her dull and predictable existence. Nora Helmer probably returned to her “Doll’s House” the next day anyway, Julia reasons, before she herself goes home to a husband exasperated by her late-night “cavorting about the countryside, going into pubs alone.”
Taylor wrote that she “was always disconcerted” when asked for her life story as “nothing sensational” had ever happened. She disliked travel and change of environment and apparently preferred “reading books in which practically nothing ever happens.” At Mrs Lippincote’s does not lack for small-scale incident. While there’s no truly dramatic action, there is a surprising twist—a revelation—at the end. Overall, the book is more a study of a small group of people and an exploration of a marriage than a plot-driven piece per se. There is some quality writing, but also some surprisingly gory descriptions of butcher shops, and some muddy, confusing paragraphs that I didn’t know what to make of. Had I not committed to reading the book as part of a project, it’s possible I might not have completed it. Taylor was clearly still finding her way with this piece.
“Society necessarily has a great many little rules, especially relating to the behaviour of women. One accepted them and life ran smoothly and without embarrassment, or as far as that is possible where there are two sexes. Without the little rules, everything became queer and unsafe.”
It is unclear precisely where and when Taylor’s first novel is set, but the reader knows it is somewhere in England and just before the end of World War II, as Roddy, the military-officer husband of 30-ish Julia Davenant—the central character—is apparently at no risk of being posted. Nevertheless, the war has had some impact. Julia and Roddy, their coddled and somewhat sickly son, Oliver, and Roddy’s 4O-year-old cousin, Eleanor, have had to move house. It’s a damp and gloomy place they’ve come to, apparently near a military base or headquarters, and it belongs to a Mrs. Lippincote. Julia is quite displeased with the situation: There is “no home of one’s own, no servant, no soup tureen, no solid phalanx of sisters; merely . . . an envious and critical cousin-in-law.” We are led to believe from the start that Julia is generally restless, dissatisfied, impulsive, and possibly spoiled.
Eleanor gets almost as much attention from the author as Julia, and makes an effective contrast. The Davenants apparently took her in when she had a breakdown, which first involved the losing of her voice and then alopecia: “one’s hair falling out in great patches” she tells someone, who’d probably prefer not to know. Eleanor is dissatisfied, too, but for different reasons than Julia. She’s a lonely spinster “in love with her cousin, for whom, as they say, she would have laid down her life with every satisfaction.” She’s certain that she would have made Rodney a far superior wife to the lightweight, capricious Julia. Before Eleanor meets Mr. Aldridge, a man who does carpentry lessons at the Montessori school where she teaches, she spends her evenings writing letters to a POW. She’s never met him, but represents him to others as “a dear friend” and in her correspondence addresses him as a lover. Once Mr. Aldridge, a communist-party member, is on the scene, however, Eleanor attempts to find community among the odd assortment of characters who regularly and informally meet above a grocer’s shop. She doesn’t, of course, have any commitment to the cause.
Like many other of Taylor’s female characters—I’ve come to learn—Julia’s ideas about what life should deliver have come from novels. Ruined by reading, no wonder she’s dissatisfied and inclined to flirtation with her husband’s wing commander, coquettishly suggesting to the older man (who takes an unusual interest in her) that he’s a sort of Mr. Rochester figure. She also rears her precocious seven-year-old son on the literature she grew up on, much to the irritation of her husband, who pronounces: “You and Oliver both read too much.” In addition, Julia has rather unusual friendships, one with an ailing waiter; another with a clergyman—a nephew of Mrs. Lippincote herself, and a third with a young corporal.
Mrs. Lippincote and her slightly mad daughter, Miss Phyllis, mostly hover in the background of the story. The latter sneaks into the house while the Davenants live there and climbs the stairs to a tower room, where she fondles her mother’s ancient wedding dress and handles other fashion accessories from years gone by. ( Jane Eyre is a touchstone text in this book and there are other gothic effects. There are also references to Freud and Virginia Woolf. The mix of these elements is a bit messy.)
Among the topics Taylor concerns herself with in this piece are the double standard in marriage and women’s roles in general. She’s also interested in the question of what people are prepared to put up with in close relationships. Often what they think they’ve kept hidden from others is not hidden after all.
Not surprisingly, Taylor’s protagonist can’t cook. She struggles with the upkeep of the large house, doesn’t compile lists to stay organized, and possibly likes to drink too much—or so says a “concerned” Eleanor to Julia’s husband. When he married Julia, Roddy, believed her “woefully ignorant of the world [and] . . . had looked forward, indeed, to assisting in her development. But she had been grown up all the time; or, at least, she had not changed. The root of all the trouble was not ignorance at all, but the refusal to accept [all the little rules pertaining to the behaviour of women].” Taylor is perhaps too staid a writer to create mid-twentieth century Nora Helmer. Julia might chafe at the constraints of her marriage, but she’s neither sufficiently troubled nor dynamic enough to leave it. She’s pragmatic. No Ibsenesque epiphany and dramatic departure for her; it’s quite enough of an escape to take a solitary evening walk away from her dull and predictable existence. Nora Helmer probably returned to her “Doll’s House” the next day anyway, Julia reasons, before she herself goes home to a husband exasperated by her late-night “cavorting about the countryside, going into pubs alone.”
Taylor wrote that she “was always disconcerted” when asked for her life story as “nothing sensational” had ever happened. She disliked travel and change of environment and apparently preferred “reading books in which practically nothing ever happens.” At Mrs Lippincote’s does not lack for small-scale incident. While there’s no truly dramatic action, there is a surprising twist—a revelation—at the end. Overall, the book is more a study of a small group of people and an exploration of a marriage than a plot-driven piece per se. There is some quality writing, but also some surprisingly gory descriptions of butcher shops, and some muddy, confusing paragraphs that I didn’t know what to make of. Had I not committed to reading the book as part of a project, it’s possible I might not have completed it. Taylor was clearly still finding her way with this piece.
March 24, 2019
To enter into Elizabeth Taylor’s world is always unsettling: I’ve written a bit about some of her work—especially
A View of the Harbour
—after reading some of the “bigger hits” of her writing career. However, as I’m making my way through some of the other novels of hers that I haven’t yet gotten to, I’m continually astonished at her unique vision of England, of marriage, and of (especially female) subjectivity.
Taylor’s vision is comedic but also bleak and often dark; here, in her first novel, she is as assured with her subject matter and her own voice as Elizabeth Bowen was in her own debut, The Hotel , which I also just recently read. While Taylor uses numerous intertextual elements in At Mrs. Lippincote’s to situate her own thematic concerns as well as her characters’ reactions to World War II—e.g., allusions to the Brontës abound—her voice is all her own.
Forced to live in a home that is not her own, Julia Davenant tries to maintain order in her life as mother to an ill, book-obsessed seven-year-old son, Oliver; as wife to the egotistical, career-driven RAF officer, Roddy; and as surrogate sister-in-law to Roddy’s spinster cousin, Eleanor, who lives with them. Yet order is difficult to maintain when one is resistance to conformity and when one balks at the constraints of life as they become apparent: we witness Julia’s difficulty balancing her own independence with her various roles, juxtaposed darkly and comedically—in a way that only Taylor can pull off—with men straying from their wives, with those who have come down in the world due to the war, and with the pull toward different kinds of affinities in a world made somehow smaller and scarier by the threat of bombs, even though Roddy’s post is in part an attempt to get his family out of the danger zone of London.
Brutal and honest in its portrayal of marriage and wartime disappointment, At Mrs. Lippincote’s takes a subtle pacifist stance to question notions of patriotism, the allure of socialism (some of the novel’s finest scenes see Eleanor’s seduction by the socialist ideal, as much out of politics as out of loneliness), and the trappings and cruelties of daily life that war intensifies just as it magnifies.
Those new to Taylor would do well to start here, and perhaps then build their way up to her magnum opus: A Wreath of Roses .
Taylor’s vision is comedic but also bleak and often dark; here, in her first novel, she is as assured with her subject matter and her own voice as Elizabeth Bowen was in her own debut, The Hotel , which I also just recently read. While Taylor uses numerous intertextual elements in At Mrs. Lippincote’s to situate her own thematic concerns as well as her characters’ reactions to World War II—e.g., allusions to the Brontës abound—her voice is all her own.
Forced to live in a home that is not her own, Julia Davenant tries to maintain order in her life as mother to an ill, book-obsessed seven-year-old son, Oliver; as wife to the egotistical, career-driven RAF officer, Roddy; and as surrogate sister-in-law to Roddy’s spinster cousin, Eleanor, who lives with them. Yet order is difficult to maintain when one is resistance to conformity and when one balks at the constraints of life as they become apparent: we witness Julia’s difficulty balancing her own independence with her various roles, juxtaposed darkly and comedically—in a way that only Taylor can pull off—with men straying from their wives, with those who have come down in the world due to the war, and with the pull toward different kinds of affinities in a world made somehow smaller and scarier by the threat of bombs, even though Roddy’s post is in part an attempt to get his family out of the danger zone of London.
Brutal and honest in its portrayal of marriage and wartime disappointment, At Mrs. Lippincote’s takes a subtle pacifist stance to question notions of patriotism, the allure of socialism (some of the novel’s finest scenes see Eleanor’s seduction by the socialist ideal, as much out of politics as out of loneliness), and the trappings and cruelties of daily life that war intensifies just as it magnifies.
Those new to Taylor would do well to start here, and perhaps then build their way up to her magnum opus: A Wreath of Roses .
March 29, 2020
I can only give this 3 stars. I am usually quite enthusiastic about Elizabeth Taylor’s oeuvre as I intend to read every last novel of hers, but this is the second novel of hers that I had some problems with. This happens to be her very first novel, published 1945 (her last, Blaming, in 1976 posthumously). I do believe that if “At Mrs. Lippincote’s” was the very first novel I read by her, it would have been my last.
Problems with this novel at least from, my perspective:
• There were too many characters thrown at me all at once and one person might pop up and then not re-appear until four chapters later and I am asking “Now who is Mr. Taylor again?” And she didn’t give me enough contextual information where I could remember who he was.
• I can’t reveal too much as those would be spoilers but there are two characters who could have been better fleshed out because they were interesting (or had the potential to be) but in the novel had minor roles Mrs. Lippincote (I mean after all she has her name in the title!) and Mrs. Lippincote’s daughter, Phyllis. And one of the main characters was not well-described, but the story’s “punch line” had quite a bit to do with him–Roddy-who is Julia’s husband. Julia is the central character in the novel, and along with Roddy has a young 7-year old son, Oliver.
• It took some getting used to over the course of 5 Taylor novels I read prior to this one regarding the author’s style of writing –she tells the reader what a character is not only saying to somebody else in the story but as importantly, if not more so, tells the reader what the character is also thinking. She uses this style to put ourselves inside the character’s head, because what they are thinking is often at odds with what they are saying. Again, if this were my first novel that I read from Taylor, I would have been confused and put off by this because practically EVERYTHING a character says in this novel is accompanied by what the character is thinking and the barrage of this style thrown at me was discombobulating (like…”what just went on in that exchange between Character A and Character B and how was that related to how they reacted towards each other ?).
• Some of the things characters were thinking were just outlandish. In my review of Taylor’s last novel, “Blaming”, I referred to something a little girl was thinking that was just over the top. And she does it in her very first novel–the little boy, Oliver, asks his mother, Julia, how babies are made and in the course of two pages this sort of bullshit is written:
1. (She starts to draw apparently a man’s innards). “She had never been good at drawing and had in any case only a hazy idea as to how such things are arranged. Bladder, then some loopy tubes, glands.”
2. (Oliver surreptitiously looks at the drawing and she sees he is looking.) “His gaze slanted down away from her, at the table. When she stopped speaking, his eyes swept under down under the lids and took a narrow peep at here. Their mouths twitched. Suddenly, her loud laugh rang out. He rolled up his handkerchief and stuffed it into his mouth.
3. (The father, Roddy, walks in and Julia tells him their son is asking how babies are made). “Roddy, who as a leader of men disregarded the intricacies of his own body, looked at Julia’s drawing without recognition; then, conscious that his son now regarded his parents in a new light (and hilariously at that) he murmured ‘Well, then,” rocked on his heels uncertainly for a moment and then followed Julia out of the room. Oliver, when his amusement had died down, began to feel he owed his parents some kindness. He was touched that his father had gone to such lengths to bring about his existence….”
I liked this novel because Elizabeth Taylor has grown on me. But I can’t give it a stellar rating for reasons cited above.
The central plot: Julia, Roddy, and Oliver are English and they lived in London but now live somewhere else in England where Roddy is stationed during the war (World War II). Mrs. Lippincote gives up her home so they can move in and have a place to stay. Roddy’s cousin Eleanor (who has a crush on Roddy) has had a nervous breakdown and is also living with them, and interacts with some Communists during because at least they pay attention to her. There is a neighbor, the Wing Commander, who Roddy reports to, and that takes a platonic liking to Julia – the Wing Commander has a girl, Felicity, who becomes friends with Oliver. That’s about all I can say. 😊
Valerie Martin wrote the Introduction for this Virago Modern Classics re-issue of the original novel. Valerie Martin is winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012 for her novel, Property. Martin mentions Kingsley Amis, who thought very highly of Taylor and called her the “one of the best novelists born in this century (JimZ: 20th century)”. Valerie Martin talks in general about Taylor and briefly comments on this novel. She says the novel when it came out in 1945 was well received critically.
Here are three reviews, one from Kirkus Reviews and two from bloggers:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re... .
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/?s=l...
https://thecaptivereader.com/2012/03/...
Problems with this novel at least from, my perspective:
• There were too many characters thrown at me all at once and one person might pop up and then not re-appear until four chapters later and I am asking “Now who is Mr. Taylor again?” And she didn’t give me enough contextual information where I could remember who he was.
• I can’t reveal too much as those would be spoilers but there are two characters who could have been better fleshed out because they were interesting (or had the potential to be) but in the novel had minor roles Mrs. Lippincote (I mean after all she has her name in the title!) and Mrs. Lippincote’s daughter, Phyllis. And one of the main characters was not well-described, but the story’s “punch line” had quite a bit to do with him–Roddy-who is Julia’s husband. Julia is the central character in the novel, and along with Roddy has a young 7-year old son, Oliver.
• It took some getting used to over the course of 5 Taylor novels I read prior to this one regarding the author’s style of writing –she tells the reader what a character is not only saying to somebody else in the story but as importantly, if not more so, tells the reader what the character is also thinking. She uses this style to put ourselves inside the character’s head, because what they are thinking is often at odds with what they are saying. Again, if this were my first novel that I read from Taylor, I would have been confused and put off by this because practically EVERYTHING a character says in this novel is accompanied by what the character is thinking and the barrage of this style thrown at me was discombobulating (like…”what just went on in that exchange between Character A and Character B and how was that related to how they reacted towards each other ?).
• Some of the things characters were thinking were just outlandish. In my review of Taylor’s last novel, “Blaming”, I referred to something a little girl was thinking that was just over the top. And she does it in her very first novel–the little boy, Oliver, asks his mother, Julia, how babies are made and in the course of two pages this sort of bullshit is written:
1. (She starts to draw apparently a man’s innards). “She had never been good at drawing and had in any case only a hazy idea as to how such things are arranged. Bladder, then some loopy tubes, glands.”
2. (Oliver surreptitiously looks at the drawing and she sees he is looking.) “His gaze slanted down away from her, at the table. When she stopped speaking, his eyes swept under down under the lids and took a narrow peep at here. Their mouths twitched. Suddenly, her loud laugh rang out. He rolled up his handkerchief and stuffed it into his mouth.
3. (The father, Roddy, walks in and Julia tells him their son is asking how babies are made). “Roddy, who as a leader of men disregarded the intricacies of his own body, looked at Julia’s drawing without recognition; then, conscious that his son now regarded his parents in a new light (and hilariously at that) he murmured ‘Well, then,” rocked on his heels uncertainly for a moment and then followed Julia out of the room. Oliver, when his amusement had died down, began to feel he owed his parents some kindness. He was touched that his father had gone to such lengths to bring about his existence….”
I liked this novel because Elizabeth Taylor has grown on me. But I can’t give it a stellar rating for reasons cited above.
The central plot: Julia, Roddy, and Oliver are English and they lived in London but now live somewhere else in England where Roddy is stationed during the war (World War II). Mrs. Lippincote gives up her home so they can move in and have a place to stay. Roddy’s cousin Eleanor (who has a crush on Roddy) has had a nervous breakdown and is also living with them, and interacts with some Communists during because at least they pay attention to her. There is a neighbor, the Wing Commander, who Roddy reports to, and that takes a platonic liking to Julia – the Wing Commander has a girl, Felicity, who becomes friends with Oliver. That’s about all I can say. 😊
Valerie Martin wrote the Introduction for this Virago Modern Classics re-issue of the original novel. Valerie Martin is winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012 for her novel, Property. Martin mentions Kingsley Amis, who thought very highly of Taylor and called her the “one of the best novelists born in this century (JimZ: 20th century)”. Valerie Martin talks in general about Taylor and briefly comments on this novel. She says the novel when it came out in 1945 was well received critically.
Here are three reviews, one from Kirkus Reviews and two from bloggers:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re... .
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/?s=l...
https://thecaptivereader.com/2012/03/...
July 12, 2022
Elizabeth Taylor squeezed my heart when she started chapter two with:
"Oliver Davenant did not merely read books. He snuffed them up, took breaths of them into his lungs, filled his eyes with the sight of the print and his head with the sound of the words. Some emanation from the book itself poured into his bones, as if he were absorbing steady sunshine."
There was some wry humor also. For example, when Eleanor asks where Sarge's wife is, Mr Aldrige answers, "At work. He is working nights and she is a dispenser. They meet on the doorstep and exchange greetings."
This book is undeniably English with the endless cups of tea, tinned pilchards, knotted handkerchiefs worn as head coverings, leather satchels, plasticine (aka modeling clay) and boys fishing with nets and jam jars.
Talking of tea: "Would you like a cup of tea?" Asked Julia, who had enough breeding to know that all emergencies - birth, death or defeat - cups of tea must at once be offered."
And regarding reading the tea leaves after downing a cup of tea made with loose tea and inverting the tea cup into the saucer, "she cheated, though, moving one tea leaf alongside another to improve the omens."
Then, there are snacks that you eat with tea, my favorite being "[toast] and lemon curd." It is traditional to offer tea and biscuits (cookies) to guests who drop in. In one such instance, tea is brewed and a plate of biscuits offered. "She accepted a heart-shaped biscuit and began to nibble it like a squirrel, turning it inquisitively and yet timidly in her hand between each bite." After a time, "the heart was nibbled away, auricles, ventricles, sultanas and all."
"Oliver Davenant did not merely read books. He snuffed them up, took breaths of them into his lungs, filled his eyes with the sight of the print and his head with the sound of the words. Some emanation from the book itself poured into his bones, as if he were absorbing steady sunshine."
There was some wry humor also. For example, when Eleanor asks where Sarge's wife is, Mr Aldrige answers, "At work. He is working nights and she is a dispenser. They meet on the doorstep and exchange greetings."
This book is undeniably English with the endless cups of tea, tinned pilchards, knotted handkerchiefs worn as head coverings, leather satchels, plasticine (aka modeling clay) and boys fishing with nets and jam jars.
Talking of tea: "Would you like a cup of tea?" Asked Julia, who had enough breeding to know that all emergencies - birth, death or defeat - cups of tea must at once be offered."
And regarding reading the tea leaves after downing a cup of tea made with loose tea and inverting the tea cup into the saucer, "she cheated, though, moving one tea leaf alongside another to improve the omens."
Then, there are snacks that you eat with tea, my favorite being "[toast] and lemon curd." It is traditional to offer tea and biscuits (cookies) to guests who drop in. In one such instance, tea is brewed and a plate of biscuits offered. "She accepted a heart-shaped biscuit and began to nibble it like a squirrel, turning it inquisitively and yet timidly in her hand between each bite." After a time, "the heart was nibbled away, auricles, ventricles, sultanas and all."
August 1, 2018
Read for the Elizabeth Taylor Reading Project. Reading the books in chronological order, this is her first novel, written in 1945.
Roddy is in the RAF, he moves his family, consisting of his wife Julia, his son Oliver and his cousin Eleanor (recovering from a nervous breakdown), down from London to be near his base. They rent a house from Mrs Lippincote, who goes to live in a boarding house. Julia seems unsettled to be living in amongst another persons things and rather discontented with her life. She is married to a very conventional husband who clearly wants her to conform, she, however, is rather unconventional herself.
A beautiful, soulful novel that seeps under your skin.
Roddy is in the RAF, he moves his family, consisting of his wife Julia, his son Oliver and his cousin Eleanor (recovering from a nervous breakdown), down from London to be near his base. They rent a house from Mrs Lippincote, who goes to live in a boarding house. Julia seems unsettled to be living in amongst another persons things and rather discontented with her life. She is married to a very conventional husband who clearly wants her to conform, she, however, is rather unconventional herself.
A beautiful, soulful novel that seeps under your skin.
July 18, 2023
The story takes place during WWII, but in the country and no bombing is taking place, as opposed to being in London from which they had moved. Roddy Davenant is in the RAF. The family has taken over a house belonging to Mrs. Lippincote, who has moved into a residential hotel for the duration.
There is lots to like about this book. I have said before that I don't have to like the characters to like a book, which is fortunate because I didn't especially care for any of the characters. Julia doesn't seem to like her life very much. Roddy seems well suited to the service, but is rather inattentive to the family. Julia doesn't care enough about the organization to understand the hierarchy. Eleanor, Roddy's cousin, has lived with them since a mental breakdown early in the war. She pursues communist activities. Oliver, Julia and Roddy's son, is the only bright spot, but I had some reservations even about him. Oliver, aged 7, is a voracious reader, reading beyond his ken. I simply found it difficult to accept that a 7-year old might read Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Still, there are lots and lots of references to many classics. There is even what I think is a coined word: Brontëphil.
What I liked especially was how Taylor could make a compelling read without bringing conflict to the fore. Each of these main characters has his own story while at the same time the characters are all inter-related. There are some important supporting characters that help to tell these stories. The prose is interesting - neither too complex nor too simple. Taylor found places to insert some humor.
There is lots to like about this book. I have said before that I don't have to like the characters to like a book, which is fortunate because I didn't especially care for any of the characters. Julia doesn't seem to like her life very much. Roddy seems well suited to the service, but is rather inattentive to the family. Julia doesn't care enough about the organization to understand the hierarchy. Eleanor, Roddy's cousin, has lived with them since a mental breakdown early in the war. She pursues communist activities. Oliver, Julia and Roddy's son, is the only bright spot, but I had some reservations even about him. Oliver, aged 7, is a voracious reader, reading beyond his ken. I simply found it difficult to accept that a 7-year old might read Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Still, there are lots and lots of references to many classics. There is even what I think is a coined word: Brontëphil.
What I liked especially was how Taylor could make a compelling read without bringing conflict to the fore. Each of these main characters has his own story while at the same time the characters are all inter-related. There are some important supporting characters that help to tell these stories. The prose is interesting - neither too complex nor too simple. Taylor found places to insert some humor.
"I am a little worried about Julia lately," said Eleanor. "She is moody and unlike herself."This is Taylor's debut. I'm glad I liked it, because this begins a year of reading her 12 novels, one each month. I expect it to be a delightful year.
Roddy suppressed the thought that Julia had been unlike herself ever since he had first known her.
August 17, 2024
Elizabeth Taylor is a writer loved by writers (from Kinglsey Amis to Hilary Mantel), and books have a very important role in all three of her books that I read so far (I intend to go on!).
In this case, the Brontë sisters are especially important: a number of their novels are quoted, commented and have a role in the story: : Jane Eyre, Villette, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights...; we find even a personal version of “the mad woman in the attic”.
It is not an exaggerated love for quotations; it is simply that reading is an important thing for these characters (as for the author).
Like little Oliver, visionary and passionate reader:
«Oliver Davenant did not merely read books. He snuffed them up, took breaths of them into his lungs, filled his eyes with the sight of the print and his head with the sound of words. Some emanation from the book itself poured into his bones, as if he were absorbing steady sunshine. The pages had personality.»
I liked Taylor's great ability to enter into the thoughts of all (including children) with small touches, succeeding in showing the main characters’ conventional side, but continually altering it with irony, self-analysis, and a kind of sympathy that is produced in the reader without eliminating a sort of discomfort.
Far from being an experimental novel, it is interesting to see how each of the many chapters seems to end without any immediate consequences in the next. Then, of course, there are ties, but always with some form of ellipse between one chapter and another.
In short, by reading her first novel, I well understood a statement by the author in an interview: «I write in scenes rather than in narrative, which I find boring.»
In this case, the Brontë sisters are especially important: a number of their novels are quoted, commented and have a role in the story: : Jane Eyre, Villette, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights...; we find even a personal version of “the mad woman in the attic”.
It is not an exaggerated love for quotations; it is simply that reading is an important thing for these characters (as for the author).
Like little Oliver, visionary and passionate reader:
«Oliver Davenant did not merely read books. He snuffed them up, took breaths of them into his lungs, filled his eyes with the sight of the print and his head with the sound of words. Some emanation from the book itself poured into his bones, as if he were absorbing steady sunshine. The pages had personality.»
I liked Taylor's great ability to enter into the thoughts of all (including children) with small touches, succeeding in showing the main characters’ conventional side, but continually altering it with irony, self-analysis, and a kind of sympathy that is produced in the reader without eliminating a sort of discomfort.
Far from being an experimental novel, it is interesting to see how each of the many chapters seems to end without any immediate consequences in the next. Then, of course, there are ties, but always with some form of ellipse between one chapter and another.
In short, by reading her first novel, I well understood a statement by the author in an interview: «I write in scenes rather than in narrative, which I find boring.»
August 4, 2018
Betty Coles became Elizabeth Taylor upon her marriage in 1936 when she was 23.
After writing for well over 15 years, 'At Mrs Lippincote's' was published in 1945 ( Elizabeth aged 32) .In the same year , the actress Elizabeth Taylor was appearing in 'National Velvet' and began her ascent to stardom.Meanwhile, over the next 30 years, ' the other Elizabeth Taylor' lived and worked in Buckinghamshire and published eleven more novels and four volumes of short stories.
'At Mrs Lippincote's' set in WW2, tells the story of Julia, who has joined her husband Roddy , who is in the Royal Air Force , with her son Oliver and Roddy's cousin Eleanor ,to live in Mrs Lippincote's house in the country.
Mrs Lippincote recently becoming a widow ,is temporarily living with her daughter at a local hotel, while Julia and her family rent her home.
Julia having left her home in London , hopes that by being with her husband ,her marriage to Roddy will be better.
Julia seems trapped in domestic life and entertaining her husband's R.A.F friends, while secretly wanting something different.
This novel is sharp and witty and reads more like scenes, rather than a novel.
Great debut and i'm looking forward to reading all her novels for my 'Elizabeth Taylor Reading Project'.
After writing for well over 15 years, 'At Mrs Lippincote's' was published in 1945 ( Elizabeth aged 32) .In the same year , the actress Elizabeth Taylor was appearing in 'National Velvet' and began her ascent to stardom.Meanwhile, over the next 30 years, ' the other Elizabeth Taylor' lived and worked in Buckinghamshire and published eleven more novels and four volumes of short stories.
'At Mrs Lippincote's' set in WW2, tells the story of Julia, who has joined her husband Roddy , who is in the Royal Air Force , with her son Oliver and Roddy's cousin Eleanor ,to live in Mrs Lippincote's house in the country.
Mrs Lippincote recently becoming a widow ,is temporarily living with her daughter at a local hotel, while Julia and her family rent her home.
Julia having left her home in London , hopes that by being with her husband ,her marriage to Roddy will be better.
Julia seems trapped in domestic life and entertaining her husband's R.A.F friends, while secretly wanting something different.
This novel is sharp and witty and reads more like scenes, rather than a novel.
Great debut and i'm looking forward to reading all her novels for my 'Elizabeth Taylor Reading Project'.
September 27, 2018
This book reminded me of my time living in a village in England with my children while my husband served in the Navy. I remember living among other people’s furniture & possessions, trying to keep them intact with small children. I remember taking the kids to school, teaching my daughter to tie a double Windsor knot in her school tie, finding places to shop, attending social events with my husband’s fellow officers, going to social events with other wives. The writing is splendid, the observations of daily life keen and clear-eyed. Just what I needed in a fraught period of life. I thoroughly enjoyed this first entry in the #ElizabethTaylorReadingProject. Highly recommended!
January 5, 2016
I loved this book, my favourite Elizabeth Taylor so far. The characters were excellent, I really liked the main character Julia and identified with her need for an escape in literature and daydream from the mundane daily life of being a wife and mother. Beautiful observations of children and life during the war.
July 20, 2018
Some debut novels and novellas seem to spring forth fully formed in their brilliance, such as Jean Rhys’s Quartet and Anita Brookner’s A Start in Life. Other first novels provide only glimpses of their authors’ forthcoming brilliance. Elizabeth Taylor’s At Mrs. Lippincote’s falls into the latter category: while it provides the reader with many rewards, reaching those rewards may try the impatient reader.
At Mrs. Lippincote’s portrays an hermetic household, with stodgy husband Roddy Davenant, waspish wife Julia, sickly son Oliver, and Roddy’s cousin Eleanor, about whom Julia observes, “”Blood is thicker than water. . . Even cousin blood.” Julia barely tolerates Eleanor, but she has her uses: Julia ”was frightened always of being in a house alone. Sometimes, she thought, that it was thing, this one terror, which forced her to endure Eleanor’s living with them.” Roddy’s a RAF officer and a boring piece of work: he ”ladled out a concoction which was mainly poor Burgundy and bits of cucumber and which the women were expected to drink.”
One of the several rewards of At Mrs. Lippincote’s is how Roddy, Julia, Eleanor, and even little Oliver hide their own surprises. What makes Taylor’s first novel interesting are the attempts of all four members of the Davenant household—individually, not in concert, and each in different ways—to break out of their household’s hermetic shell. The nuances of those break-out attempts enliven At Mrs. Lippincote’s. What else enlivens At Mrs. Lippincote’s is Taylor’s clear-eyed portrayal of a stultifying marriage, with Taylor busting through conventional views of marriage when At Mrs. Lippincote’s was published in 1945. Here’s Julia responding to Roddy and Eleanor’s questioning about where she spent the evening: ”Where have you been?’ they cried. . . She poured a little coffee into Roddy’s empty cup and began to drink it. ‘Out,’ she said. . . ‘But where? We’ve been worried.’ . . ‘Are you the police?’ she asked tiredly. . . ‘Julia!’ [responds Roddy]. . . ‘Oh, in the morning. By the morning I’ll have thought up some explanation.’” Here Julia responds to Roddy’s news of his impending transfer from his backwater posting: ”It makes very little difference to me. I am a parasite. I follow my man round like a piece of luggage or part of a travelling harem. He is under contract to provide for me, but where he does so is for him to decide.” And here Elizabeth Taylor sums up Roddy’s hopes for his marriage to Julia: ”. . . Roddy wanted love only where there was homage as well, and admiration. He did not want merely to be reckoned at his own worth.”
There’s so much to appreciate in Elizabeth Taylor’s novels. At Mrs. Lippincote’s, Taylor’s first, may reward only patient readers. 3.5 stars.
At Mrs. Lippincote’s portrays an hermetic household, with stodgy husband Roddy Davenant, waspish wife Julia, sickly son Oliver, and Roddy’s cousin Eleanor, about whom Julia observes, “”Blood is thicker than water. . . Even cousin blood.” Julia barely tolerates Eleanor, but she has her uses: Julia ”was frightened always of being in a house alone. Sometimes, she thought, that it was thing, this one terror, which forced her to endure Eleanor’s living with them.” Roddy’s a RAF officer and a boring piece of work: he ”ladled out a concoction which was mainly poor Burgundy and bits of cucumber and which the women were expected to drink.”
One of the several rewards of At Mrs. Lippincote’s is how Roddy, Julia, Eleanor, and even little Oliver hide their own surprises. What makes Taylor’s first novel interesting are the attempts of all four members of the Davenant household—individually, not in concert, and each in different ways—to break out of their household’s hermetic shell. The nuances of those break-out attempts enliven At Mrs. Lippincote’s. What else enlivens At Mrs. Lippincote’s is Taylor’s clear-eyed portrayal of a stultifying marriage, with Taylor busting through conventional views of marriage when At Mrs. Lippincote’s was published in 1945. Here’s Julia responding to Roddy and Eleanor’s questioning about where she spent the evening: ”Where have you been?’ they cried. . . She poured a little coffee into Roddy’s empty cup and began to drink it. ‘Out,’ she said. . . ‘But where? We’ve been worried.’ . . ‘Are you the police?’ she asked tiredly. . . ‘Julia!’ [responds Roddy]. . . ‘Oh, in the morning. By the morning I’ll have thought up some explanation.’” Here Julia responds to Roddy’s news of his impending transfer from his backwater posting: ”It makes very little difference to me. I am a parasite. I follow my man round like a piece of luggage or part of a travelling harem. He is under contract to provide for me, but where he does so is for him to decide.” And here Elizabeth Taylor sums up Roddy’s hopes for his marriage to Julia: ”. . . Roddy wanted love only where there was homage as well, and admiration. He did not want merely to be reckoned at his own worth.”
There’s so much to appreciate in Elizabeth Taylor’s novels. At Mrs. Lippincote’s, Taylor’s first, may reward only patient readers. 3.5 stars.
May 10, 2019
Elizabeth Taylor’s crushing tale of a disintegrating marriage in 1940’s England. Julia Davenant has just joined her husband, Roddy, at his RAF posting in the countryside outside London. With Roddy, his cousin Eleanor, and her son, Oliver, Julia has been installed in the rental home of Mrs. Lippincote. Julia is as uncomfortable in her life as she is in the house that is not her home.
It is the state of marriage that Taylor is truly exploring, the confining nature, the double standard.
Per Roddy:
She exasperated him. Society necessarily has a great many little rules, especially relating to the behavior of women. One accepted them and life ran smoothly and without embarrassment, or as far as that is possible where there are two sexes. Without the little rules, everything became queer and unsafe. When he had married Julia, he had thought her woefully ignorant of the world; had looked forward, indeed, to assisting in her development. But she had been grown up all the time; or, at least, she had not changed. The root of the trouble was not ignorance at all, but the refusal to accept.
This is Elizabeth’s Taylor’s first novel. If this is the beginning effort, I am looking forward to reading her more mature and polished work.
It is the state of marriage that Taylor is truly exploring, the confining nature, the double standard.
Per Roddy:
She exasperated him. Society necessarily has a great many little rules, especially relating to the behavior of women. One accepted them and life ran smoothly and without embarrassment, or as far as that is possible where there are two sexes. Without the little rules, everything became queer and unsafe. When he had married Julia, he had thought her woefully ignorant of the world; had looked forward, indeed, to assisting in her development. But she had been grown up all the time; or, at least, she had not changed. The root of the trouble was not ignorance at all, but the refusal to accept.
This is Elizabeth’s Taylor’s first novel. If this is the beginning effort, I am looking forward to reading her more mature and polished work.
August 11, 2018
This is the first book I've read by E. Taylor and wow. I thought it was going to be some kind of funny wry marriage comedy like "Barefoot in the Park" or the like, but it turns out to be a deft and precise study of a melancholy and restless woman named Julia, who has an extremely precocious son (I read adult books early, but not "Jane Eyre" at age seven!). They live with Roddy, her husband and the father of Oliver, and Roddy's cousin, Eleanor, in the home of Mrs. Lippincote, a widow who has been pushed out to a hotel so they can rent her home, all of this during the second world war. There are other strong portraits of characters here, too, in particular Eleanor, the poisonous cousin who despises Julia, and a band of communists, a besotted commander, and a derelict restaurant owner. Chapter thirteen brings the particular delight and sadness of a child experiencing the pleasure of a lazy afternoon.
I want to read more of this novelist's work.
I want to read more of this novelist's work.
November 8, 2022
"To myself, I seem like a little point of darkness with the rest of the world swirling in glittering circles round me."
This is a perfect example of why I love Mrs Taylor's novels. Her books are a mixture of a simple story about ordinary people with a deep wisdom of an observant eye.
Here we had a marriage between two people who couldn't create a relationship that would have satisfied them both.
But Roddy wanted love only where there was homage as well, and admiration. He did not want merely to be reckoned at his own worth.
And even more, this was a story about many, many marriages...
"How can you love what you do not respect?" he asked bitterly.
"Women have to," she replied....
As a second level, we had WWII in the background. And some Mrs Taylor's observations about those times were brilliant (although for a modern reader probably not original / not unknown).
Contemplating brutality makes you used to it. It's a way of saving our reason-of putting armour over one's nerves. If I really imagined what I'm doing now, I couldn't do it. It is the first step towards committing atrocities on human beings. At first, you are nervously repelled, then take it for granted, then look to it for excitement and, finally, for pleasure and ecstasy. Then you're done for and must be shot. Actually, you're done for by the time you've got half-way up the ladder.
The third level were young Communists. Although I saw their story rather like the life of fighters for human rights.
The supporting characters had their own stories to tell too, e.g. Mr Taylor, Leo, Olivier, Eleanor.
There was also a feminist touch:
She exasperated him. Society necessarily has a great many little rules, especially relating to the behaviour of women. One accepted them and life ran smoothly and without embarrassment, or as far as that is possible where there are two sexes. Without the little rules, everything became queer and unsafe.
"'Lucky for us Emily [Bronte] was not a man,' said Julia, 'or she might have drank herself to death at the Black Bull. It was better to write Wuthering Heights, but she really had no choice. Men are not forced to turn their desolation to advantage as women are. It's easier for them to despise their passion, quell their restlessness in other ways. The Bronte girls just couldn't slip down to the pub. So they had to take to writing.'"
One just isn't able to not see Elizabeth Taylor's wisdom:
The awful thing about life is only having one. And not being able to keep your cake and eat it.
'When we are young, or well, we say "I like" or "I hate"; we never say "It is good for me", "It is bad for me."'
I have just one 'but', there was something in the style of writing, telling the story that made me feel a bit tired because I had to concentrate too much. It wasn't a perfectly smooth narration. I don't know how to explain it. It was great it just wasn't as great as other novels by E. Taylor I have read. Nonetheless, after finishing it I had one word in my head "wow!". So, as a whole, it was '5-star book', 'the must-read' etc.
September 5, 2018
Imagine discovering Anne Tyler for the first time. That's how I felt reading this 1945 novel by Elizabeth Taylor, the novelist. The writing is intoxicatingly good, the characters humanly flawed and unexpectedly funny and sad.
***********
Julia came in with the pound of burnt sausages lying on the smallest dish.
"You can't expect mustard on the first night," she warned Roddy, who thought what a very few seconds it would have taken to mix.
Oliver Davenant did not merely read books. He snuffed them up, took breaths of them into his lungs, filled his eyes with the sight of the print and his head with the sound of words. Some emanation from the book itself poured into his bones, as if he were absorbing steady sunshine. The pages had personality. He was of the kind who cannot have a horrifying book in the room at night. He would, in fine weather, lay it upon an outside sill and close the window. Often Julia would see a book lying on his door mat.
"My mother,"Julia went on, "begged me to look upon my education as a luxury, never to think of it as a way of getting a good job, nor a good husband either, but only as a means of lessening my boredom if I did."
But Roddy wanted love only where there was homage as well, and admiration. He did not want merely to be reckoned at his own worth.
"How can you love what you do not respect?" he asked bitterly.
"Women have to," she replied, feeling he was playing into her hand, like a character on the stage, grateful to him for giving her this chance, as if he had given her a cue in a play.
***********
Julia came in with the pound of burnt sausages lying on the smallest dish.
"You can't expect mustard on the first night," she warned Roddy, who thought what a very few seconds it would have taken to mix.
Oliver Davenant did not merely read books. He snuffed them up, took breaths of them into his lungs, filled his eyes with the sight of the print and his head with the sound of words. Some emanation from the book itself poured into his bones, as if he were absorbing steady sunshine. The pages had personality. He was of the kind who cannot have a horrifying book in the room at night. He would, in fine weather, lay it upon an outside sill and close the window. Often Julia would see a book lying on his door mat.
"My mother,"Julia went on, "begged me to look upon my education as a luxury, never to think of it as a way of getting a good job, nor a good husband either, but only as a means of lessening my boredom if I did."
But Roddy wanted love only where there was homage as well, and admiration. He did not want merely to be reckoned at his own worth.
"How can you love what you do not respect?" he asked bitterly.
"Women have to," she replied, feeling he was playing into her hand, like a character on the stage, grateful to him for giving her this chance, as if he had given her a cue in a play.
October 21, 2014
I'm so glad I've discovered Elizabeth Taylor's wonderful books.
This was a charming book set in WW2.
RAF Roddy, his wife Julia, son Oliver and cousin Eleanor come to stay in Mrs Lippincotes house.
Beautifully written with charm and wit.
She has an eye for detail and people's relationships.
An excellent read.
This was a charming book set in WW2.
RAF Roddy, his wife Julia, son Oliver and cousin Eleanor come to stay in Mrs Lippincotes house.
Beautifully written with charm and wit.
She has an eye for detail and people's relationships.
An excellent read.
August 30, 2018
Set at the end of WWII somewhere in England, this debut novel looks at domestic life and the expectations on the women with respect to family and the home. Julia is a bored housewife who can’t seem to live up to her duties of mother and wife and wishes for more independence. In contrast, Eleanor, her husband’s cousin, longs for what Julia has. The novel deals with the tedium of everyday life and not much happens, making it a bit slow for me.
March 4, 2022
Funny, sarcastic, daring (for the time it was written, 1945). Richly drawn recognizable characters. I loved it. Strongly recommended. See this review for a more thorough discussion and this one for a comparison with Barbara Pym's work.
March 14, 2023
34th book of 2023.
I was inspired by Alan to choose an author I'd read nothing of and read them all. Then, once all of them were read, to drop them over a number of days one-by-one (he did this with Annie Ernaux's books at the end of last year). I soon realised I don't have the guts he has. But, nonetheless, I chose Elizabeth Taylor as my author and rather than reading them all off of Goodreads and adding them all at once, I thought I'd read them all as I went and just promise myself that I would in fact read all 12 this year. So this is her first book.
And it reads like a debut. It's a little uneven, there's quite a lot of different things going on, but at the same time, nothing really going on. It's a homage to the books and writers Taylor loves, Austen, Woolf, the Brontes. I liked the portions about Oliver, Julia's young bookworm child, and her befriending of another young girl. There's quite a lot about resisting the norm of becoming a housewife and being your own woman and I enjoyed those sections too, but they didn't feel lively enough. The dialogue was sometimes humorous, other times fittingly reticent (being English). I think Taylor has some very good novels to come. I'm excited.
I was inspired by Alan to choose an author I'd read nothing of and read them all. Then, once all of them were read, to drop them over a number of days one-by-one (he did this with Annie Ernaux's books at the end of last year). I soon realised I don't have the guts he has. But, nonetheless, I chose Elizabeth Taylor as my author and rather than reading them all off of Goodreads and adding them all at once, I thought I'd read them all as I went and just promise myself that I would in fact read all 12 this year. So this is her first book.
And it reads like a debut. It's a little uneven, there's quite a lot of different things going on, but at the same time, nothing really going on. It's a homage to the books and writers Taylor loves, Austen, Woolf, the Brontes. I liked the portions about Oliver, Julia's young bookworm child, and her befriending of another young girl. There's quite a lot about resisting the norm of becoming a housewife and being your own woman and I enjoyed those sections too, but they didn't feel lively enough. The dialogue was sometimes humorous, other times fittingly reticent (being English). I think Taylor has some very good novels to come. I'm excited.
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