THE LONG AFTERNOON

by Ursula Zilinsky ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 1984

From a snuggery of Edwardian privilege to the deadly reckoning after the Armistice: a mellow, engaging, faintly overripe tale of Era's End--with, as in Middle Ground (1968), knightly heroism and a tender homosexual affair. The ""Three Musketeers,"" they believed themselves to be in their Yorkshire boyhoods: Toby, the future Lord Altondale; his German cousin Felix, heir to the second largest munitions works in Germany; and David Harvey, son of the vicar, whom disapproving Nannie thought to be ""so beautiful as to be improper."" But, within the golden elegance of Altondale Park and the estate of Felix's family, there are tea-cup-rattling disturbances. City-loving Lady Millicent reins in her frustrations when it's apparent that her husband, Lord Altondale, prefers rolling hills and stable boys; and Felix's sister, spunky Angelika, pulls off a dramatic and thrilling rebellion on the steps of the nuptial altar. Meanwhile, Toby and Felix are off to oppressively regimented boarding schools--while ambitious David, spared such rigors (thanks to relative poverty), reads for Oxford, where his beauty and a certain canniness lift him above his station. (He's taken up by a mildly dissolute, arty, hedonistic clutch of lordlings and wealthy layabouts.) Felix, arriving at Oxford, newly intoxicated by fresh movements in the arts, is bemused by David's associates; Toby, Sandhurst-straight, is disapproving. Then two women enter the picture: David's blind and beautiful sister Julian, who has been more or less adopted by Lady Millicent; and charmingly hoydenish Kitty Snow, an American widow and distant Altondale cousin, an independent, quasi-feminist sort. Toby will eventually marry Julian (she and David are a pair at conniving); Felix will, against all opposition, cling to his adoration of Kitty; David will find his life-long love in poet Lucas Ryder--an initially opportunistic liaison that deepens in meaning, also into a kind of liberation. And finally, after the war (a splendid tour for German Felix, heroic wounds for Toby and David), Felix will find his Kitty, Toby's marriage is a disaster. . . and David tends Lucas in a truly noble dying. With mostly attractive characters and talk, Upstairs tea-tables and ponycart ambiance: a generally appealing, if rather moistly indulgent, novel--likely to find a Brideshead-ish audience.

Pub Date: May 11, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION