A haunting portrayal of love and betrayal in a London hollowed by war.
It is wartime London, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Stella discovers that her lover Robert is suspected of selling information to the enemy. Harrison, the British intelligence agent on his trail, wants to bargain, the price for his silence being Stella herself. Caught between two men and unsure who she can trust, the flimsy structures of Stella's life begin to crumble.
'Alive with the erotic tensions of the blackout, the Blitz and the heightened pleasures of sex in the proximity of death' London Review of Books
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROY FOSTER
This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition
It is wartime London, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Stella discovers that her lover Robert is suspected of selling information to the enemy. Harrison, the British intelligence agent on his trail, wants to bargain, the price for his silence being Stella herself. Caught between two men and unsure who she can trust, the flimsy structures of Stella's life begin to crumble.
'Alive with the erotic tensions of the blackout, the Blitz and the heightened pleasures of sex in the proximity of death' London Review of Books
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROY FOSTER
This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition
Both of its time and timeless, a spy tale and a haunting love story... She is the supreme mid-century anatomist of the heart, with a unique sensitivity to the lives of ordinary English men and women in extremis Guardian
"Imagine a Graham Greene thriller projected through the sensibility of Virginia Woolf." The Atlantic Monthly
[Bowen] startles us by sheer originality of mind and boldness of sensibility into seeking our world afresh. . . . Out of the plainest things--the drawing of a curtain--she can make something electric and urgent." --V. S. Pritchett
"Dense as a poem with symbol and suggestion. . . . The work of a writer [of] rich and winning gifts." Time
"Miss Bowen [has] power to evoke, suggest and explore down oblique and little-frequented avenues the mysterious centers of human conduct." --The New York Times
[Bowen] startles us by sheer originality of mind and boldness of sensibility into seeking our world afresh. . . . Out of the plainest things--the drawing of a curtain--she can make something electric and urgent." --V. S. Pritchett
"Dense as a poem with symbol and suggestion. . . . The work of a writer [of] rich and winning gifts." Time
"Miss Bowen [has] power to evoke, suggest and explore down oblique and little-frequented avenues the mysterious centers of human conduct." --The New York Times