Author: Elizabeth Bowen

Publisher: Vintage Books

First published: 1948

Setting: London, UK
Read in December 2013

My Rating ★★★  2.8

My Waterstones Review

“Like modern art you will love it or hate it”

A frustrating read, sometimes enjoyable, many may not complete this book. The Los Angeles Times says ‘Probably the most intelligent noir ever written… fills the reader’s heart with dread’. At times it was too intelligent for me and I so dreadfully wanted some passages to finish.

This book has complexity with parallels running between characters, but it is the dialogue which in my opinion lets it down, it is sometimes completely unbelievable. The chapters I enjoyed most were the ones I read with no distractions in the early evening. At times the prose is outstanding. I wasn’t surprised to find in the introduction that Elizabeth Bowen wrote the book over an extended period.

Try Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair for an entirely different London wartime book.

Book Review

Wartime London, September 1942, is used as the backdrop for this love affair between Stella and Robert. Stella has been previously married and has a son, Roderick, who has just joined the army and is waiting for action. Robert is suspected of collusion with the enemy and Harrison a supposed government agent is manipulating Stella, certainly for personal gain, but his intentions may not be entirely official. The theme that runs through this book is who can you trust, if anyone, when the country is on the brink of invasion. 

The book starts and finishes with a secondary character, Louie, who has lost her parents in a bombing raid, her husband Tom is in action, she is alone making attempts to meet people and befriends Connie who shares the same boarding house. Louie’s story is only loosely connected through random events firstly with Harrison and then later with Stella. The ordinary lives of Louie and Connie and many others like them are trapped by the war, no future can be planned. In contrast the relative wealth and beauty of Stella gives her choices, albeit difficult ones, with a potential for escape to neutral Ireland where her son will inherit an Irish estate.

This book can be enjoyed and detested, many may not complete it. There is more to this book than first appears and it is best read in a quiet environment, it is not suited to bedtime reading at the end of a hard day’s work. The themes, motifs and character parallels behind The Heat of the Day may not be apparent on first reading.