What a world we live in when a book like this is out of print, (although available for small change online). Elizabeth Jenkins was nearly ninety when she wrote A Silent Joy, which invokes the 1950s with a combination of nostalgia and clear-eyed moral distaste. She doesn’t exactly take on popular themes. Some sorts of divorce are criticised for being selfish. The hero is a genial old patriarch. The villains are a selfish wife and her grasping, social-climbing lover. There is class tension (sometimes almost hostility) between many of the characters.
I've nearly finished The Tortoise and the Hare, as recommended by you. It took me a while to slow my mind to her pace, and the density of her prose, but now I'm hooked. Will add this one to the list, thank you!
I've nearly finished The Tortoise and the Hare, as recommended by you. It took me a while to slow my mind to her pace, and the density of her prose, but now I'm hooked. Will add this one to the list, thank you!
Have you read any Anita Brookner? Her many slim novels are the very dense internal worlds of urban English women, set in the 60s and 70s.