Do You like book A Wreath Of Roses (1994)?
Unfortunately, this is my least favourite of the Elizabeth Taylor novels I’ve read so far. It surprised me how little I liked it as I have been hugely impressed by Taylor’s writing by the six or so books of hers I’ve read. In general I’m not a huge fan of delicate short novels about middle class English women – I need a bit more blood and guts and soul in my reading – but I was won over on account of simply how brilliant her writing is. The Wreath of Roses should therefore have been a big hit for me, as this is meant to be the novel where Taylor gets real and includes topics such as suicide, murder, ageing, and liaisons with strange men in bars. But sadly this was a big disappointment. The book seemed very maudlin – three women in a house over summer all feeling sorry for themselves for no real reason. Taylor’s dialogue is normally exquisite and usually very funny too – but here the dialogue felt rushed and as if it had only been included to bulk up the pages. The twist at the end didn’t seem realistic at all. I found myself skim-reading this book after the half way point, because I couldn’t see it getting any better and it didn’t. It also felt a bit didactic; as if Taylor was telling you what things meant rather than just allowing the reader to read and interpret at leisure.Strangely this novel felt like a bad parody of a Taylor novel instead of the real thing. I would urge any new readers of Taylor to start with a different text to this – A Wreath of Roses doesn’t do her justice at all. Angel would be an obvious choice, or A Game Of Hide And Seek perhaps. I’m not going to be put off Taylor completely by this one failure; but this does cast a shadow over what hitherto seemed (for me) a great and loveable oeuvre.
—Theadora
A finely-tuned novel that inspects forensically the minutiae of ordinary lives. Taylor weaves beautifully a narrative of different perspectives, drifting from one to the other to create an impressionistic landscape, though occasionally perhaps becomes overly introspective giving too much reign to her characters' navel gazing. This is a dark little story, set post WW2 in a rural England licking its wounds, where a small group of characters gather in a provincial town – prim Camilla on the brink of spinsterhood and her childhood friend Liz, married and newly become a mother, arrive to spend the summer as they always have with Frances a painter who was once Liz's governess. The two younger women struggle to adjust to the inevitable changes in their old friendship, each having her own quiet crisis. But whilst LIz's attention is taken up worrying about her baby, Camilla becomes distracted by a mysterious man she encountered on the train. Beneath Richard's matinee idol looks lurks a deeply confused and damaged man who has dangerously lost touch with the truth of things...
—Elizabeth Fremantle
Sharply realized characterizations in this Taylor novel from 1949 with a darker undercurrent than I've found in her other books.Some of the very best passages deal with the now elderly painter and former governess Frances, at whose cottage two younger women have come for their accustomed summer holiday. Alone, with the door locked, she felt safe to paint and to be herself. To her, work was a loosening of will, a throwing down of defences. Sitting back, utterly malleable, her personality discarded like a snake's skin, she became receptive and, so, creative.The tension between who we really are and who we say we are, or who others expect us to be runs throughout the novel. A wonderful psychological read. There's almost the hint of an English Highsmith in the suitor who may not be quite what he seems.
—Cynthia
