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.
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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 )
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Taylor is one of the hidden treasures of the English novel' Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
The novel is a love story, and not a happy one, but it is also extremely funny. The main characters, Harriet and Vesey, conduct a love affair mainly in his absence over a period of perhaps fifteen years. In the meantime Harriet takes a job in a gown shop (yes, "gown," not "dress") and marries an older man, Charles, who knows a little about Vesey, just enough to feel constantly undermined by him. The part of the novel dealing with the shop is especially hilarious, with the antics of the other assistants.
Vesey, effete and ineffective, is yet somehow a powerful character who exerts his influence not only over Harriet and Charles, but over their daughter as well. In fact, the daughter is convinced that Vesey is her real father. He is perceived always as a malign influence, whereas the truth is that he never quite has the energy to achieve anything, not even adultery with Harriet.
The minor characters, like Charles' mother Julia, are excellent. Julia is a former actress and a great drama queen still - quite a nasty piece of work. At one point she makes a reference to the film "Brief Encounter," which is unlike any other you will come across. The former suffragette Caroline and her husband Hugo, who had spent 1914-18 as a Rupert Brooke replica, are also very funny. Caroline is alarmingly principled and is self-righteous; Hugo is resigned: "He knew she was a good wife, though a bore." The principles in this case revolve around a nut-rissole, Caroline being of course a vegetarian.
The novel's end is ambiguous, and I have never been able to decide "what happens."
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Unlike the reviewer above, I didn't find this powerful and unsettling novel particularly funny. It is however devastatingly truthful, with complex and entirely convincing characters. It sounds putting off to say that most are trapped in their own particular brand of failure and despair, and yet it is its truthfulness that makes this fine novel optimistic, in showing how the characters cope with their troubles and surmount or come to terms with them in different ways. A good read.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Not one of her best in my opinion. Disappointing, because I have great admiration for Taylor's astute observation, her painterly descriptive prose, her sense of moral purpose linked to a subtle and profound 'reading' of the human condition. However, this novel is not as tightly written as, say, 'A Wreath of Roses'and does not really 'take off' until the last section where her ability to depict the ebb and flow of relationships is fully realised. Here Taylor's honesty and refusal to seek easy narrative solutions give the work a hardness, a soundness lacking in the earlier part of the novel.
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3.8 out of 5 stars
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
It's not really much of a love story
I love Elizabeth Taylor novels, and like most of her works this one is a very understated and ultimately unsatisfactory love story. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Julia C
5.0 out of 5 stars
Such a subtle book
The author plays a game of hide and seek with the reader - setting up expectations of outcomes that are then turned around. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Jean Aylott
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor
I enjoyed Part 1 of this novel - elegant use of language yet full of feeling. Reminiscent of "Atonement" for me. Enjoyed it!
Published 7 months ago by Mrs. F. M. Dunn
4.0 out of 5 stars
Things unsaid
"A Game of Hide-and-Seek", first published in 1951, opens in the 1920s. Harriet and Vesey are two teenagers playing the game with their young charges:
"They could not... Read more
"They could not... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Eleanor
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Game of Hide and Seek
Elizabeth Taylor, not to be confused with the late movie star, is one of the finest British novelists of the 20th century, yet she still doesn't get the attention she... Read more
Published on 12 April 2011 by Scritore
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not her best
This book has been described as Elizabeth Taylor's best - a "masterpiece love story" - so I was expecting a great deal. Read more
Published on 31 Dec 2009 by Mrs. R. M. Lee
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