In A Summer Season (VMC) [Paperback]

When I finished my first Elizabeth Taylor - I only discovered her a few months ago - I immediately set out to read
everything she has written. She is always so brilliantly observant and it seems she is incapable of writing even
a single jarring word.
This book is about Kate, a wealthy widow who marries a purposeless, feckless charmer ten years younger than herself. Dermot didn't marry her for her money; he does love her, or thinks he does, but how long can such a marriage last? Elizabeth Taylor's talent is to make you sympathise with Dermot, too; his feeble attempts to find work, his lack of any self-respect, his awkwardness with his wife's friends whose literary allusions soar over his head, his wretched boredom during an evening of classical music. Their marriage is more like a tolerant mother and son relationship with passionate sex thrown in ... and indeed Dermot (whose hinterland is fast cars, pubs and television) has far more in common with Kate's son.
The end of the book - and Kate's return to her old, sedate Home Counties life - is quite shocking.

What a brilliant writer Elizabeth Taylor was. I am so glad that she is having a revival, she richly deserves it. This book was first published in 1961 and really does describe life as it was in those days. I know, I was there! Full of wit and humour, lovely conversations. The heroine is Kate, a charming widow who has recently married Dermot, who is 10 years younger than herself. He has moved into Kate's family home and joins her son Tom, daughter Lou, and her Aunt Ethel. Dermot's mother Edwina is a friend of Kate. Kate visits her, and she visits the family home. There are some wonderful scenes involving this amusing family. Here's a lovely quote. Kate is speaking. 'It's strange how sympathetic one can be to young lovers in literature and yet react so irritably to them in real life. Wouldn't one fend off Romeo from one's own daughter? I wouldn't have him within a mile of Lou if I had any say in it, the unstable youth. What behaviour! And that naughty, forward girl.'

I have to admit that I did not read this new Virago Modern Classics edition. I needed to read it in a copy printed at the time as it was all part of the scene. But here it is for those who do not have an original copy. Do read it: it is beautifully crafted, thoroughly enjoyable.

Many have told me that I should read the books of Elizabeth Taylor - an author I'd not heard of until the publication of Nicola Beauman's recent biography The Other Elizabeth Taylor by the wonderful Persephone Books. I picked up this particular one for its striking cover photo, and was told by pal Helen, that it was about a woman who marries a much younger man - a toy boy! - well that sold it to me instantly.

Published in 1961, it follows one summer in the lives of a family living in the Thames Valley, with 'The View' of Windsor castle visible in the far distance. This is already prime commuter belt - every day the men go off to work on the train to their jobs in the city - well, everyone except Dermot that is. He is the young Irish thirty-something husband of forty-something well-off widow Kate. They live in some comfort with Kate's sixteen year old daughter Louisa and twenty-two year old son Tom, her Aunt Ethel, and looked after by cook Mrs Meacock. As the novel opens, Kate is on a duty visit to her new mother-in-law, Edwina, up in London for the day. Edwina is always trying to find a job for her youngest, who has never been able to settle at anything or anyone until he fell in love with Kate.

In the first half of the movel we find out what makes them all tick - and frankly, it's all about sex. Kate with her younger husband, Tom with his girlfriends, and Louisa's growing awareness and crush on the young curate in the village. Aunt Ethel watches all these mostly repressed emotions and assesses it in her letters to her friend Gertrude - "When the sex goes Kate will think him no bargain".

Then the Thorntons return from abroad. The Thorntons, Charles and Dorothea, were Kate and her first husband Alan's best friends, and Tom had a thing for Minty, their daughter. Charles' wife died and Kate is keen to make them feel at home again now they're back in England. There are bound to be problems - as three's a crowd - Charles and Kate are the same age, whereas Dermot is closer to the children in age and sometimes, outlook.

"They were walking in circles around each other, Kate thought - both Dermot and Charles. When she had introduced them, Dermot had shaken hands with an air of boyish respect, almost adding 'Sir' to his greeting, and Charles seemed to try and avoid looking at him or showing more than ordinary interest. Although he had not met him before, even as far away as Bahrain he had heard stories, and Kate, writing to tell him of her marriage, had done so in a defensive strain, as if an explanation were due and she could think of no very good one."

The story is mainly told from Kate's point of view, and we hear not only her voice but her thoughts also - the two are often opposite. In that terribly repressed middle-class way, everyone says one thing and means another. The author takes a scalpel to these relationships and dissects them with sensitivity and wit, bringing things to a climax with great skill. I can safely say this novel made an instant fan of me, and I wonder why I never discovered her before