A COMPASS ERROR

by Sybille Bedford ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 14, 1969

The modulated novel of manners encounters particular difficulties today at a time when discretion, decorum, or in one of the occasional French words sprinkled throughout here-tenu-no longer seem to matter. All are particular attributes of Sybille Bedford as evidenced in her strongest book, The Legacy, and a second novel of 1963--Favorite of the Gods--to which this is a sequel. At times only a footnote. Flavia Herbert, the daughter of that favorite, Constanza, now at fifty looks back on the summer when she was seventeen and made ""a wrong start"" which perhaps put her off course. Her own ""course"" is never really determined; what shapes up here in retrospect is her intervention in the life of her mother when she inadvertently (perhaps not?) shortcircuited her mother's marriage to the man who was to retrieve Constanza from her homeless, aimless existence of years. Flavia is now spending a summer in the south of France, envisaging being a writer, sharing in the world of ideas, while Constanza is away with Michel Devaux just prior to their planned alliance. An older, worldlier, ruthlessly attractive woman claiming to be Michel's cousin and insisting on finding out his whereabouts arrives, seduces Flavia, uses her, decimates her, leaves her with the equivocal problems of right and wrong, innocence vs. guilt which have attracted Mrs. Bedford in her other works. . . . Often compared to Henry James, Mrs. Bedford moves through an expatriated, cultivated circle just before the war with an older, equally unattached, less knowing Maisie. While the story is inconsequential enough, one cannot overlook the assured presence of a graceful, worldly writer.

Pub Date: March 14, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1969

Categories: FICTION