A BOOK AND A LOVE AFFAIR

by Helen Bevington ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 21, 1968

This memoir of a marriage by the writer, teacher and author of light verse, follows Charlie Smith's Girl (1965) as an autobiographical appreciation of people, places, and things loved and remembered. The Bevingtons met in 1927 at the graduate school of Columbia University, and celebrated their mutual joy in each other's presence by scribbling wicked, portentous notes during the class in Romanticism, and, in an air chilly but promise-filled, bucketed back and forth one night on the Staten Island Ferry. As one, they discoursed on English Literature and related subjects. The suitor's courtship was tumultous, impatient, and successfully passed into a marriage in which a night never passed without the question: ""Did I forget to tell you today that I love you?"" The reckless volcano-dancing of the Twenties (the Bevingtons bounced round the world with little money but high spirits); the Depression of the Thirties, replete with babies, overseas intimations of disaster, and a farmhouse retreat (with rare friendships and four-part Palestrina); the very real terrors of the Forties--all are traversed in a New York City of sometimes ominous contours. To one who has caught the drift of the times, books are always relevant. ""A book and a love affair is all one needs,"" a book like this--a witty, tender tribute to a life and a love.

Pub Date: Aug. 21, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1968

Categories: NONFICTION