The Long View

Product Information

Cooper, Jonathan (23 April 1990). "Novelist Martin Amis Carries on a Family Tradition: Scathing Wit and Supreme Self-Confidence". People . Retrieved 15 June 2012. No woman would like being told what she was, or would have been. They like the future—the future and the present.” The first section of the book is set in 1950. Mrs Fleming is married to an impossible man—conceited, rude, selfish, arrogant, and uncaring. The only man in the book who is not in some way a monster is her father, a man who cares not about the present but about 16th century social customs, is mostly reading in his library, and ignores the silly ways of his promiscuous wife. He is loved by Toni, as we later learn Mrs Fleming to be called, primarily because she hates her mother. She was always expecting something wonderful to happen to her—up to the very day that she died, she believed that.

June Stoker would soon be introduced to a company which had long ceased to discover anything new about themselves likely to increase either their animation or their intimacy. This quotation is the very definition of the writing style in this book. Is this entire book a stream of consciousness from Mr. Fleming? Originally published in 1956, The Long View is Elizabeth Jane Howard's uncannily authentic portrait of one marriage and one woman. Written with exhilarating wit, it is a gut-wrenching account of the birth and death of a relationship. Non ci sono paragoni tra i due, ma voglio dire che l'ho letto con una tale partecipazione che non so dire se sia un bel libro davvero.Partecipazione, non immedesimazione. È sicuramente un romanzo imperfetto, ma mi ha coinvolto sia con la storia sia con la scrittura, davvero elegante, sottile, puntuale. You spend ninety per cent of your time with children, invalids, fools, and animals. What a mind will yours become.” Self-centered men, everyone at their worst. There are amazing human interactions, but at times I got lost in the writing. I wanted more fire in Antonia, and had a hard time relating to her. If I didn't feel down about love before.... If you think that you might read this book and don’t want to know anything about the plot, then read no further. Although the pleasure of the book is in the prose and acute observations of human relationships, so I don’t think that knowing a little about the book would matter much; and I’ve no idea anyway how much I will give away.

Howard paints a portrait of life (and marriage) in mid-20th century London. Her depiction of the society in which the Flemings live and the incisive examination of their marriage can be amusing. As written by Howard, it seems to be a time when a man marries under the illusion that he can take the raw material that he perceives as his wife and shape her into something pleasing to him. Antonia’s willingness to accept this situation and her continual striving for Conrad’s love also seems to belong to another time. But the sadness of a world in which love seems impossible and marriage at best a waste of people’s lives and at worst the opportunity for people to destroy someone (or themselves), becomes increasingly painful. You should be more discriminating in the flattery you require. Or if that is beyond you, more selective as to time". Her second marriage, to Australian broadcaster Jim Douglas-Henry in 1958, was brief. [3] Her third marriage, to novelist Kingsley Amis, whom she met while organising the Cheltenham Literary Festival, [7] lasted from 1965 to 1983. For part of that time, 1968–1976, they lived at Lemmons, a Georgian house in Barnet, where Howard wrote Something in Disguise (1969). [11] Her stepson, Martin Amis, credited her with encouraging him to become a more serious reader and writer. [12]It's a heartbreaking read but oh the skill of Howard showing every emotional nuance so that you experience all of it directly yourself. he always maintained that living consisted of no fundamentals, outlines, basic truths or principles ... but simply a vast quantity of details, endlessly variable, and utterly unrelated)." Finding a character's point of view is made more difficult because the author keeps inserting her own external view, as when a character is reminded that she should 'take tea (that horrible unnecessary meal designed to make unsatisfied women more unsatisfactory) with' another woman.

Then we return still further, to the 1930s. People still dress for dinner and don't understand one another. Alcohol still lubricates society. A woman stares into her empty glass as she decides that she could never be an artist, the glass symbolising an empty dream. She is told 'anyway, you'll marry and have children' although there were some actual careers open to women at this time. The last part of the story occurs in 1926. The Chronicles were a family saga "about the ways in which English life changed during the war years, particularly for women." They follow three generations of a middle-class English family and draw strongly from Howard's own life and memories. [7] The first four volumes, The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, and Casting Off, were published from 1990 to 1995. Howard wrote the fifth, All Change (2013), in one year; it was her final novel. Millions of copies of the Cazalet Chronicles were sold worldwide. [1]She had acted in Stratford as a girl, and she would have liked what the day offered: the dark wintry river, the swans gliding by, and behind rain-streaked windows, new dramas in formation: human shadows, shuffling and whispering in the dimness, hoping – by varying and repeating their errors – to edge closer to getting it right. In Jane’s novels, the timid lose their scripts, the bold forget their lines, but a performance, somehow, is scrambled together; heads high, hearts sinking, her characters head out into the dazzle of circumstance. Every phrase is improvised and every breath a risk. The play concerns the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of love. Standing ovations await the brave.” Hilary Mantel on EJH The Light Years and Marking Time were serialised by Cinema Verity for BBC Television as The Cazalets in 2001. A BBC Radio 4 version in 45 episodes was also broadcast from 2012. [7] Adams, Matthew (3–4 June 2017). "Talent and torment". The Sydney Morning Herald . Retrieved 4 September 2017. Elizabeth Jane Howard CBE FRSL (26 March 1923 – 2 January 2014), was an English novelist. She wrote 12 novels including the best-selling series The Cazalet Chronicles. [1] Early life [ edit ]