A tangle of friends and relations gives us Bowen's most personal and domestic novel
Elizabeth Bowen was born in Dublin in 1899, the only child of an
Irish lawyer and landowner. She was educated at Downe House School
in Kent. Her book Bowen's Court (1942) is the history of her family
and their house in County Cork, and Seven Winters (1943) contains
reminiscences of her Dublin childhood. In 1923 she married Alan
Cameron, who held an appointment with the BBC and who died in 1952.
She travelled a good deal, dividing most of her time between London
and Bowen's Court, which she inherited.
Elizabeth Bowen is considered by many to be one of the most
distinguished novelists of the twentieth century. Her first book, a
collection of short stories, Encounters, appeared in 1923, followed
by another, Ann Lee's, in 1926. The Hotel(1927) was her first
novel, and was followed by The Last September (1929), Joining
Charles(1929), another book of short stories, Friends and Relations
(1931), To the North (1932), The Cat Jumps (short stories, 1934),
The House in Paris(1935), The Death of the Heart (1938), Look at
All Those Roses (short stories, 1941), The Demon Lover (short
stories, 1945), The Heat of the Day(1949), Collected Impressions
(essays, 1950), The Shelborne (1951), A World of Love (1955), A
Time in Rome (1960), Afterthought (essays, 1962), The Little Girls
(1964), A Day in the Dark(1965) and her last book Eva Trout
(1969).
She was awarded the CBE in 1948, and received honorary degrees from
Trinity College, Dublin in 1949, and from Oxford University in
1956. In the same year she was appointed Lacy Martin Donnelly
Fellow at Bryn Mawr College in the United States. The Royal Society
of Literature made her a Companion of Literature in 1965. Elizabeth
Bowen died in 1973.
Bowen is a tough old bird. And once you're on her side, it's going
to be a loyal alliance. Because it's nice to have a writer who will
never lie to you. Not even to make you feel a little better
*Kirkus*
Bowen wrote numerous great novels, including Friends and
Relations...about how telephones have infiltrated our thinking and
desires: waiting for a call, being interrupted by a call, not
knowing what might be announced
*Guardian*
There is much to savour, enjoy, intrigue and shock in this
wonderful novel. Bowen is sublime
*Book Snob*
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