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Product Description
Book Description
A subtle love story by one of the most accomplished writers of the 20th century
Product Description
Vinny Tumulty is a quiet, sensible man. When he goes to stay at a seaside town, his task is to comfort a bereaved friend. Vinny is prepared for a solemn few days of tears and consolation. But on the evening of his arrival, he looks out of the window at the sunset and catches sight of a mysterious, romantic figure: a beautiful woman walking by the seashore. Before the week is over Vinny has fallen in love, completely and utterly, for the first time in his middle-aged life. Emily, though, is a sleeping beauty, her secluded life hiding bitter secrets from the past.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Ignored for decades, the author has lately come to the attention of more and more readers. How lucky we are!
Elizabeth Taylor's books are simply but beautifully written. The human condition is explored with much humanity, subtelty and wit. Her books quietly explore and pluck at feelings with a rare flair for observation of the everyday human condition often exposing the unexpected.
Often compared with Anita Brookner, Jane Austin, Barbara Pym, she deservedly finds herself in very good company.
This book is thoroughly recommended as are all of her others which I have read with much pleasure.
Elizabeth Taylor's books are simply but beautifully written. The human condition is explored with much humanity, subtelty and wit. Her books quietly explore and pluck at feelings with a rare flair for observation of the everyday human condition often exposing the unexpected.
Often compared with Anita Brookner, Jane Austin, Barbara Pym, she deservedly finds herself in very good company.
This book is thoroughly recommended as are all of her others which I have read with much pleasure.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This entertaining and enjoyable novel by Elizabeth Taylor centres on Vinny Tumulty, a quiet, sensitive and sensible middle-aged man; the sort who can always be relied upon to say the right thing at the right time and to do what would be expected of him. When he travels to a seaside town to comfort a bereaved female friend, he expects to spend a few days offering his sympathy and a manly shoulder to cry on. However on his first evening, gazing out of the window as the sun is sinking, he observes a beautiful, but seemingly lonely and faintly mysterious woman lingering by the seashore. After a few carefully placed questions, Vinny discovers the identity of his mystery woman; she is called Emily and lives quietly with her sister after a terrible and life-altering accident.
Within a few days, Vinny has fallen in love for the first time in his life and he decides to offer his love and support to this retiring and beautiful woman. However, although Emily may appear quiet and self-effacing, she is hiding something from the past and so, it would seem, is Vinny.
Elizabeth Taylor writes beautifully; she uses language with a subtle sensuality and writes with compassion and with perceptive wit, delicately highlighting the humour running through human relationships and social intercourse. Taylor is often compared to Jane Austen, and those who enjoy reading her novels will understand the comparison, but I think she should be enjoyed for her own considerable merits. If you have not yet discovered Elizabeth Taylor, and you enjoy reading intelligent, subtle, witty novels, then you are in for a treat.
4.5 Stars.
Also recommended by the same author:A View of the Harbour (Virago Modern Classics) and The Soul of Kindness (Virago Modern Classics)
If Elizabeth Taylor is a new author to you and you would like to find out more about her and her writing, I would recommend: The Other Elizabeth Taylor by Nicola Beauman.
Within a few days, Vinny has fallen in love for the first time in his life and he decides to offer his love and support to this retiring and beautiful woman. However, although Emily may appear quiet and self-effacing, she is hiding something from the past and so, it would seem, is Vinny.
Elizabeth Taylor writes beautifully; she uses language with a subtle sensuality and writes with compassion and with perceptive wit, delicately highlighting the humour running through human relationships and social intercourse. Taylor is often compared to Jane Austen, and those who enjoy reading her novels will understand the comparison, but I think she should be enjoyed for her own considerable merits. If you have not yet discovered Elizabeth Taylor, and you enjoy reading intelligent, subtle, witty novels, then you are in for a treat.
4.5 Stars.
Also recommended by the same author:A View of the Harbour (Virago Modern Classics) and The Soul of Kindness (Virago Modern Classics)
If Elizabeth Taylor is a new author to you and you would like to find out more about her and her writing, I would recommend: The Other Elizabeth Taylor by Nicola Beauman.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Elizabeth Taylor is often both exhaustively and exhaustingly compared to Jane Austen, but I can never see why. They have little in common- apart from both being female.
Austen's world is one of social manners and marriages in stilted and simple English.Taylor's prose is silkily sensuous witty, urbane, descriptive and rather modern. I find her delicate style more similar to Colette for instance; the incredible observational powers, the delicacy and wit- Taylor is seamless.
There are pithy aphoristic conversations, dark secrets, and enormous good humour. Sexuality depicts the psychological 'setting' of each character.
The Sleeping Beuaty of this book is a once promiscuous and thorough;y modern girl, now an inert and frozen child's companion. Both are damaged, the child an accident of birth, a woman damaged by life.Her secrets are bittersweet and painful. Her would-be lover, Vinnie Tumulty finds himself at first repelled and aroused by her mask like loveliness and then entranced by the compassion he feels for her. Compassion is his greatest weakness and also his greatest strength. He also has a secret, a wife of which he cannot rid himself having given way to pretending she did not exist for so very long.
In between this Mills and Boon type scenario great dark humour fizzles and flowers in conversations between his lady friends and their secret passion for betting.
Ageing is dealt with great humour and the effect of face creams analysed with 'almost Oriental politeness'. Their breasts are remarked as being sick of one another, Marron meringues are refused and then devoured as deference to attractiveness gives way to petty greeds and desires, which finally surface as uncontrolled bitchiness and destructive and casually vindictive jealousy.
Then there are hilarious exchanges between Nanny and the nursemaid, a strange changeling child and a controlling bleakly tamped down sister who dominates the Sleeping Beauty as she did her own husband, by stealth, fake maladies and
small displays of pique.
There is a subtext of power: the powere that women have over men and vice versa, the power of the unkind word, the pathetic subterfuges that women resort to finding themselves without youth or social standing.
Of course this is all rather in retrospect, but you will recognise the pettiness of the English middle classes at a time when a woman would allow herself to be groped by a stranger in a cinema rather than cause embarrassment.
In a way we are all Sleeping Beauties until we are awoken, and this is what happens to every character in this marvellous novel; whether by breavement, shock, sex, love or change, we are all affected by the shifting effect of our lives as they touch on others, like the shifting light on a changing sea.
In the end, the message is presented in the most humane and unromantic way; however flawed or lives, true love is everything.
Austen's world is one of social manners and marriages in stilted and simple English.Taylor's prose is silkily sensuous witty, urbane, descriptive and rather modern. I find her delicate style more similar to Colette for instance; the incredible observational powers, the delicacy and wit- Taylor is seamless.
There are pithy aphoristic conversations, dark secrets, and enormous good humour. Sexuality depicts the psychological 'setting' of each character.
The Sleeping Beuaty of this book is a once promiscuous and thorough;y modern girl, now an inert and frozen child's companion. Both are damaged, the child an accident of birth, a woman damaged by life.Her secrets are bittersweet and painful. Her would-be lover, Vinnie Tumulty finds himself at first repelled and aroused by her mask like loveliness and then entranced by the compassion he feels for her. Compassion is his greatest weakness and also his greatest strength. He also has a secret, a wife of which he cannot rid himself having given way to pretending she did not exist for so very long.
In between this Mills and Boon type scenario great dark humour fizzles and flowers in conversations between his lady friends and their secret passion for betting.
Ageing is dealt with great humour and the effect of face creams analysed with 'almost Oriental politeness'. Their breasts are remarked as being sick of one another, Marron meringues are refused and then devoured as deference to attractiveness gives way to petty greeds and desires, which finally surface as uncontrolled bitchiness and destructive and casually vindictive jealousy.
Then there are hilarious exchanges between Nanny and the nursemaid, a strange changeling child and a controlling bleakly tamped down sister who dominates the Sleeping Beauty as she did her own husband, by stealth, fake maladies and
small displays of pique.
There is a subtext of power: the powere that women have over men and vice versa, the power of the unkind word, the pathetic subterfuges that women resort to finding themselves without youth or social standing.
Of course this is all rather in retrospect, but you will recognise the pettiness of the English middle classes at a time when a woman would allow herself to be groped by a stranger in a cinema rather than cause embarrassment.
In a way we are all Sleeping Beauties until we are awoken, and this is what happens to every character in this marvellous novel; whether by breavement, shock, sex, love or change, we are all affected by the shifting effect of our lives as they touch on others, like the shifting light on a changing sea.
In the end, the message is presented in the most humane and unromantic way; however flawed or lives, true love is everything.
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