The circle

by Elaine Feinstein

Lena can’t run a home, and she can’t run her husband. When Ben sleeps with their au pair girl, Lena’s jealousy is as much a jealousy of the girl’s domestic efficiency as of her sexuality. Their relationship slides, as Ben the scientist retreats more and more to his lab. Lena, for her part, drinks more, talks more, meets Eli, who is much younger than she is. Against the background of these adult events, another torment at least as sharp is going on. The sons of the marriage, Alan and Michael, closely observed, show how unhappy a childhood can be. At the same time the children are responsive to a physical world which they alone inhabit. Ben’s sudden illness brings the relationship to a crisis which sooner or later it was bound to reach. Elaine Feinstein’s novel has the clear qualities of her poetry: the author has the uncompromising ability to develop the uniqueness of her characters. Her writing does not suggest that there are any easy answers, or philosophies to apply to the problem of people’s living together. In this her writing has an unusual truth.

Elaine Feinstein’s poetry has been included in a number of anthologies and her first collection was published by the Goliard press in 1966. Donald Davie has this to say: ‘In a Green Eye is a report on the state of the Nation…it will be a very long time before we see a first collection so distinguished.’ In the same year she edited a selection of John Clare’s poems. More recently she contributed a selection to Faber’s Poetry Introductions I and has translated the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetayeva for the first British publication of her work. This is Elaine Feinstein’s first novel.

Genres: Fiction

165 pages, Hardcover

First published August 17, 1970

About the author

Elaine Feinstein was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge and has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Leicester. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as an editor for Cambridge University Press (1960-62), as Lecturer in English at Bishop's Stortford Training College (1963-6), as Assistant Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Essex (1967-70), and as a journalist.

She has contributed to many periodicals, including the Times Literary Supplement, and was formerly Writer in Residence for the British Council in Singapore and Tromsø, Norway.

Of Russian-Jewish ancestry, she has been influenced by Russian writers, especially Marina Tsvetayeva and Anna Akhmatova.

She is the author of a number of plays for television and radio and several biographies, including singer Bessie Smith, writer D. H. Lawrence, Poet Laureate Ted Hughes and Anna Akhmatova.