Taylor Elizabeth : Game of Hide-and-Seek (Vmc) (Virago Modern Classics) - Softcover

Taylor, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140161376 ISBN 13: 9780140161373

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd, 1986

Synopsis

'Elizabeth Taylor is finally being recognised as an important British author: an author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth. As a reader, I have found huge pleasure in returning to Taylor's novels and short stories many times over. As a writer I've returned to her too - in awe of her achievements, and trying to work out how she does it' Sarah Waters

An intelligent, haunting love story, with echoes of Brief Encounter, by one of the best British writers of the 20th century.

During summer games of hide and seek Harriet falls in love with Vesey and his elusive, teasing ways. When he goes to Oxford she cherishes his photograph and waits for the letter that never comes.

Years pass, and Harriet stifles her imaginings; with a husband and daughter, she excels at respectability. But then Vesey reappears and her marriage seems to melt away. Harriet is older, it is much too late, but she is still in love with him.

About this title

Review

Elizabeth Taylor is finally being recognised as an important British author: an author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth. As a reader, I have found huge pleasure in returning to Taylor's novels and short stories many times over. As a writer I've returned to her too - in awe of her achievements, and trying to work out how she does it (Sarah Waters)

Always intelligent, often subversive and never dull, Elizabeth Taylor is the thinking person's dangerous housewife. Her sophisticated prose combines elegance, icy wit and freshness in a stimulating cocktail - the perfect toast to the quiet horror of domestic life (Valerie Martin)

A magnificent and underrated mid-20th-century writer, the missing link between Jane Austen and John Updike' (David Baddiel Independent)

A Game of Hide and Seek showcases much of what makes Taylor a great novelist: piercing insight, a keen wit and a genuine sense of feeling for her characters (Elizabeth Day Guardian)

The unsung heroine of British 20th-century fiction. Elizabeth Taylor wrote 12 novels, and each displays her exquisitely light touch, her firt for discreet irony and her skill at revealing the emotional depths behind even the meekest exterior. She is at her very best here, a novel in which love is never declared, but is meticulously evoked. No writer has described the English middle classes with more gently devastating accuracy (Rebecca Abrams, SPECTATOR)

Her stories remain with one, indelibly, as though they had been some turning-point in one's own experience (ELIZABETH BOWEN)

Book Description

An intelligent, haunting love story, with echoes of Brief Encounter, by one of the best British writers of the 20th century.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0140161376
• ISBN 13: 9780140161373
• Binding: Paperback