A fair number of people writing about this novel in Goodreads have expressed extreme disappointment while others have expressed enthusiasm and others have said that they had mixed feelings about it. I feel the same. The story is in at least one respect very powerfully presented and in at least another respect a compilation of very poor writing indeed. a reader is likely to be confused and torn between rejection and attraction. First the negative: Elizabeth Bowen's writing is pretentious and dated and the two are connected because her kind of pretentiousness what typical for its time. Pretentiousness in modern writing, it seems to me, is characterised by slickness, understastement, by the writer's showing how fast thinking and comprehensive he/she is, above and beyond ideological or religious commitment, regarding all commitments and even true passions from a height. Pretentious writing in Elizabeth Bowen's time, I would suggest, was marked by showing off an ability to "see below the surface" to be profound and cryptic in obervation and the recounting of observation, a tendency to the overstatement even to bathos, to show that one was of immense sagacity, to be unbound by conventions of chronological succession or mundane concerns, to be out-and-out intellectual. This novel is so intellectual (in the true sense of the word, of acting from mental observationa nd decsiion never from impulse or intuition or instinct) that even the children sound like Wittgenstein!The writer does not manage to escape from under the coat tales of a far superior writer, Virginia Woolf, the influence, or at least the influence of the kind of writing which VW initiated, the intense observation of small moments, of repeated personal quirks: "Aunt Violet would lift off the tea-cosy by it sfrill and Uncle Bill raise the lid of the muffin-dish to see what kind of hot cakes there were today. The hot cakes were always running with butter: she would loook to see if he were pleased, he always was pleased.." Similarly to VW, the observation is all about a very small section of society at a very short moment of history. The other influence I think, and not a happy one, is that of Henry James. Elizabeth Bowden's sentences often have the same eccentric syntax but with her it looks like someone trying to write like someone else, with Henry James, we are confronted with a new and very compley style of narrative. Elizabeth Bowen also plays with the sequence of the story, like Proust. Much of this novel read for me like an unsuccessful attempt to follow in the footsteps of a superior predecessor.And yet, and yet... The front cover of the Penguin edition is a detail from a painting by Adolf Menzel (en passant-where English publishers excel and Americans and French so often do not pass muster and where German publishers have often been- until relatively recently where I have noticed an improvement- simply abject and pitiful failures is in the matter of deciding on the design of front covers for paperback books)so entirely appropriate for this book and highlighting not only its smallness (not necessarily meant here as a negative criticism) but its devotion to detail,. its subtelty, its intensiveness. What I felt reading this book, the first novel of Elizabth Bowen that I had read, was that it would not surprise me in the least if this writer were a painter, and a better painter than a writer. The depicition of scenes, attention to detail, care for detail, adding words often repeated, like so mayn dabs of colour, capturing of moments, simple moments but intense and unforgettable ones, depicted often with reference to light and shade, tone and colour, is the writer's great strength. I would almost go so far as to say that you wil enjoy this novel as far or as little as you enjoy or do not enjoy looking at paintings. There we have it-one the one hand, pretentious, too clever for its own good, too earnest for its own good, all intellect no red blood, all namby-pamby, extremely effeminite (never would anyone dream that this novel was written by anyone with a thimbleful of testosterone!) on the other hand drawn (and I mean pretty well literally drawn, she retruns to themse in the story like a painter retrurning to another corner of the canvas, another detail of the painted scene) with intense feeling, with a love and attention to detail that many more established writers could never achieve however hard they tried, so that the memory of thios novel will linger long after you may think you should have forgotten everything about it. Despite herself, Elizabeth Bowen "packs a powerful punch" all the the patience, the attention to the small moments of life. That maybe something she learned form Virginia Woolf too, namely how to use her eyes. Most of us, and that includes novelists, are half-blind most of the time. Elizabeth Bowen is anything but blind. Colour is more important to her than grammar and the obervation of charcater and reaction more important than telling a tale. She is for me a painter disguised as a novelist. Many of her descriptions read like painting turned into words-"Trees growing up here, and deep silent grass, make the walk round the ramparts dark green. Between the branches there were rifts of blue; the bright sea-lit day shimmered and broke in."Awarding stars is too abitrary "It was ok" seems such an inadequate defintion-ditto "quite liked it". I award it three stars because I enjoyed this story not because I am much convinced by the writer's ability to tell a story and if it realism you are looking for let alone social realism, stay well clear, but because I empathise with the writer's attempt to capture small moments, hold them in her hand and say "look deeply at this". I sympathise with anyone who disliked this book and I sympathise who anyone who liked it. I have tried to make clear why.
There’s a great introduction by A.S. Byatt, particularly interesting because it contained personal reminisces of multiple readings of the book.I almost arbitrarily chose the star rating for this book. I’ve never had such a difficult time rating a book. Honestly, at times during reading it, I could have chosen anything from 1 to 5 stars. It was a bizarre reading experience for me. It’s the most exasperating book I’ve read in the almost 2 years since I joined Goodreads. With many books I’ve had a difficult time choosing whether to rate a book 4 or 5 stars or 3 or 4 stars or 2 or 3 stars, but I’ve never had any dilemma more challenging than that. If I wasn’t so compulsive about rating every single one of my read books, I’d be tempted to leave this unrated.I had a difficult time getting used to the author’s writing style which was spare and unusual, but lovely too. I felt stupid while reading because the writing style made reading this book feel challenging for me, but I felt as though I shouldn’t find it difficult. Because her language was so precise, I caught at least some of her grammatical errors, notably split infinitives. The fact that I noticed such things in a novel meant I was sometimes almost bored or at least not completely engrossed. Despite the beautiful prose, it took some effort on my part not to skim at certain points, but I never wanted to stop reading.The liberal use of quotation marks for all the dialogue was distracting for me until I became used to them about 2/3 through the book.This book was full of melancholy. I enjoyed the two children Henrietta and Leopold; she doesn’t underestimate children, which I appreciated. She captures emotion very well, and pain and loss and how neglect feels, and childhood. However, I didn’t find her depictions of the motivations of some of the adults completely believable. There were many absolutely beautiful passages but overall the cohesiveness I wanted was lacking for me. My favorite parts were the beginning and the end.Overall, this book was a challenge, but what I’m disappointed in is myself for feeling that way. I’d like to say I’d read it again someday to see if I could get more out of it, but there’s just too many other books I’d rather read.Edit: After reading and rating/reviewing this, after just a short time has elapsed, this book is growing on me more & more.
Do You like book The House In Paris (2002)?
"how illness martyrized her -- he diagnosed her as prey to one creeping growth, the Past, septic with what happened. Knowing this, how should she not be ill?""Henrietta and Leopold shook hands for the first time, like people attempting some savage rite. His hand was nervy and dry. Their eyes dropped and they edged away from each other. Henrietta looked lost. Ray held his hand out and she put hers into it gratefully. His overwrought eyes held no reflection of her, but, bending, he said: 'Henrietta, good luck.' Miss Watson, who had possession of Henrietta's ticket, presented it at the barrier, and they both walked away alongside the long high train...Ray and Leopold stood watched Henrietta, long fair despondent hair down her back, walk away down the platform with Miss Watson. Charles's rump hung out under one arm; she grew smaller and smaller." So much love for this book, xxxxxx
—Jennie
I'm just not sure how I feel about this book! E. Bowen writes brilliantly in that detached, British pre-war kind of way, leaving questions strewn in her wake! OK, so in a very cold & detached way, this is about innocence, betrayal, sex, death, lies, & what horrible things may await the children who learn about all these before they're ready to deal with them. (Leopold is clearly the literary son of that creepy little boy in The Turn of the Screw.) But what happens to Henrietta as a result of her adventure at the house in Paris? What happens to Leopold? Will Ray take Leopold "home" to his mother? What will she do? Will Ray & Karen have an Actual Conversation? Will Leopold turn into psycho killer & appear in future horror movie?! Why, oh why, are three women in love with Max who is clearly strange crazy person? Did Max Do It with Naomi's mother? Will Naomi's mother end up living with Tony Perkins in a Hitchcock movie? Why can't Max & Karen just Do It & get it over with? Is Karen tragic heroine or possibly just stupid? What is the significance of cigarettes in pre-WWII novels? Did Naomi Do It with Henrietta's grandmother??! (Definitely something left out, there!) And what is up with the Monkey?! Am I reading too much into this book? All this repressed sexuality stuff makes me want to Know the Answers! Brilliant...but frustrating!
—Marigold
I was surprised by how good this book was. Like some of the other commenters below, I was more taken with the present than with the past, though once I had finished I could see how it works. For me the strength of this book's prose was its pace. It was slow, but in a good way. Not heavy or ponderous or even methodical, just taking as much time as is necessary to describe things as they are. I think, too, that this is why the present sections feel so much more engaging than the past; these sections are the slowest, while the past is much more engaged with a typical flashback narrative where important events are related in order. (Not that this is bad in general, just that this wasn't how the book started out.)I also found myself looking back to that time a few years ago when I picked up What Maisie Knew in a used bookshop, and then found myself tremendously disappointed by it. This book delivers some of what I had expected to find there; the children and their experiences are taken very seriously, and their perspective filters what happens in the present. In the last section, having read the past, you know more than they do, and that gap also drives some of the interest, but the first section, when the reader is placed into the same perspective that the children are -- having to guess what is happening, sensing that things are strange without having the necessary information to prove it -- this section makes the first section the strongest for me. All in all, an unexpected treat. I'm bumping her up a star because clearly this book is under-rated and not well enough known.
—Nicole
