La novel of manners is in Elizabeth jane howard a special turning point Because, from its configuration in the form of an extensive saga, it reaches that point of historical fiction that would explore new paths for later authors. Signatures that can range from Ken follett but also Kate morton (to cite two great bestsellers who often rely on those detailed constructions, on the one hand, but with their prolonged action in several installments).
So hail the pioneers. Because voluntarily or not; Out of an interest in finding new literary settings or just a lack of conciseness derived from chunky novels, Elizabeth captivated millions of readers and made it clear that serialized novels worked perfectly with a reading audience eager to live those other lives. proposals on a more continuous basis.
Despite being considered one of the greatest writers in England, the arrival of her work in Spain has always been dispersed, without the luster of other great storytellers with their popular series under their arms. So the Siruela publishing house you have done a good job recently and you have decided to put this essential writer on your site
Top 3 Recommended Novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Everything changes
Let's start at the end, which is when everything is understood. Because a lavish literary work such as the Chronicles of the Cazalet, are contemplated with amazing clarity from this final vantage point that culminates a gruesome ascent like any vital process, worth living through its intense reading. Not that you have to start the saga here. But it should be noted that this ending is very much on the same level as everything discovered throughout the time that the narrative occupies.
The 1950s. With the death of the Duchess, undisputed matriarch of the Cazalet clan, the last vestiges of yesterday's world also disappear forever, that privileged environment in which the family prospered, a universe of great mansions and loyal servants, a perfect balance between class, leisure and tradition.
And although the older people no longer find the keys to deciphering the future, divorces, affairs, the balance between marriage and motherhood, between ideals and ambitions, mean that young generations cannot decisively trace a new course for their lives. In a Christmas as nostalgic as it is hopeful, they will all converge once more in Home Place, perhaps the only certainty, a fragile hold while everything goes on, while everything changes ...
Published in 2013, more than twenty years after its author went to press the first title of that monumental novel-river that is the Chronicles of the Cazalet, this fifth volume of the series masterfully closes the one that, in addition to one of the sagas relatives most loved by readers, it is undoubtedly the last great classic of English letters of the last century.
How the sea changes
Another novelon recovered for the cause of the discovery of this magnetic author. Perhaps a synthesis work of the great writer to concentrate what could have been a new Cazalet series, losing that vital companion effect for us readers but gaining in that action necessarily more vivid in its course.
Fourteen years after his death, the memory of his daughter Sarah still haunts the famous playwright Emmanuel Joyce and his wife Lillian. Always accompanied by Jimmy - Emmanuel's devoted representative - the couple travel continuously from city to city, resorting to different strategies to cope with the loss: he seduces all his secretaries and she places her daughter's photos on the dressing table of each new one. hotel where they are staying.
Until, on the eve of their departure to New York to select the cast for their next production, an incident with the playwright's latest conquest forces them to immediately find a replacement. When Alberta Young, the daughter of a Dorset clergyman, comes to the interview with a copy of Middlemarch under her arm, their lives will never be the same again ...
Narrated by its four main characters, the action of How the Sea Changes takes place between London, New York, Athens and the evocative island of Hydra. Elizabeth Jane Howard, the indispensable author of Chronicles of the Cazalets, once again displays in this novel all the intelligence and stylistic elegance that made her one of the greatest writers of XNUMXth century English literature.
The light years
With this book everything began, engulfed in the contradictory sensation of that lightness indicated in the title. A lightness with which time destroys us in the same way as the protagonists of this life made of paper. And yet so much to discover in that announced fleetingness ...
The one of 1937 and the one of 1938. Two unforgettable summers, safe in the golden light of Sussex, where the days are consumed in a succession of children's games and picnics on the beach. Three generations of the wealthy Cazalet family reunited on their home farm.
The chores of two grandparents, four children, nine grandchildren, countless in-laws, servants, and domestic animals that range from the everyday to the most momentous: the driver drives too slowly, the children rescue their cat from the top of a tree, the Adults speak of the threat of a new war, and the dreams and passions that lurk beneath their light talk barely overshadow the indolent routine of the last happy years that England will long know.
When Elizabeth Jane Howard published the first Cazalet Chronicles novel in 1990, she laid the touchstone for what would become an immediate contemporary classic and the most important river-novel written in Britain since A Dance for Music. from Anthony Powell's time. In The Light Years, the author exquisitely outlines the intimate geography of a family and a way of life that, inevitably, already belonged to yesterday's world.
Other Recommended Books by Elizabeth Jane Howard
a long look
1950, London. Antonia and Conrad Fleming await guests at their son Julian's engagement dinner. With its magnificent views over the city, everything is ready in his beautiful and impeccable mansion on Hampstead Hill to receive the most prominent of London's high society. However, Antonia's voice and eyes seem veiled by disenchantment and the feeling, almost certainty, that, after all, things could have been different...
This opens the review of the history of the twenty years of the Fleming marriage, a journey back, as delicate as it is relentless, through the joys and sorrows of married life, from the uncertain present to their luminous first meeting.
A long look is both a promising love story and its opposite, the sincere and stark decomposition process of a couple exposed to the wear and tear of the years. Without a doubt, one of the great novels of that fundamental figure in English literature of the XNUMXth century that was Elizabeth Jane Howard.
