THE LONG VIEW

by Elizabeth Jane Howard ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 26, 1956

A second novel defines and refines the shifting status of a woman's life with considerable acuity and urbanity, retraces the past from a point in time when at 40 Antonia Fleming faces a chilly future alone-- her children have grown up and her husband has grown away from her. A retrogressive device is used. Antonia, as she looks ahead to the empty years on which she ""must graft some fabric of her life"", goes progressively backward through her personal past from the war years, to a short, rather meaningless affair while her husband sustained his controlled relationships with other women; to the few days following her marriage, and Conrad's skillful lage which she met with uncertainly and a little inadequacy, and the knowledge that there would be no emotional liens beyond the demands of his desire; and finally to a first love affair, at 17, an inconstant character who proved to be one of her mother's lovers.... Miss Howard, a sensitive stylist, writes with a smarting sense of fugitive and perishable emotions, but with sympathy as well as disenchantment. This should have an admiring, sophisticated feminine audience.

Pub Date: April 26, 1956

ISBN: 0671000241

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1956

Categories: FICTION