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It Ends with Revelations

3.38 of 5 stars 3.38 · rating details · 98 ratings · 18 reviews

During a summer festival in an English spa town Miles Quentin, a distinguished actor, and his devoted wife Jill, become friendly with the local member of Parliament, Geoffrey Thornton, and his young daughters, Robin and Kit. All these attractive, intelligent and fully occupied people are seemingly untroubled. But the surface of their lives is deceptive.

All, even the lively...more

Hardcover, 280 pages

Published 1967 by Little, Brown and Company

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Oct 11, 2007 Stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people torn between love and ethics

Shelves: mycuppa, favorites

Like Casablanca and Now Voyager,, this book is about a woman who is torn between following her heart and being loyal. Dodie Smith always has an interesting take on love. She's sort of like a Charlotte Bronte in reverse. While tipping her hat to the idea of self-sacrifice, Smith generally comes down on the side of personal happiness. She somehow manages to do this without making the reader feel contempt for her characters. At least, I don't...I always sympathize with Dodie's heroines, and think I...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Donna LaValley rated it 3 of 5 stars

It Ends With Revelations: This novel was disappointing, though not a waste of time. It still has Dodie Smith’s quirky, ultra likeable characters and vivid sense of place, but my impression is that she was trying to write “more adult” fiction. Perhaps she was discounted as a juvenile literature author after “101 Dalmations and “I Capture The Castle.” (I don’t know what her plays are like.) In this one, also set in the theater world as was the last novel, a very handsome, wealthy, famous, very VER...more

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Jul 04, 2011 Cara M rated it 2 of 5 stars

The writing was engaging and engrossing, and I did like a lot of the characters, but I was really not invested in the intended romance, and it seemed like the poor woman was getting the boot out of her happy if non-sexual marriage and ending up with an unattractive politician with two overbearing daughters. There were a lot of scenes where I was worried the daughters were going to gang up on her and have her for themselves. Which... I probably would have enjoyed. But it was a little odd that i f...more

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Sep 17, 2011 Melee rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'd say this is the Dodie Smith book I've enjoyed most since I Capture the Castle. (Though I'm set to read The Town in Bloom soon and that one seems to get the most positivity [again, not counting I Capture the Castle].)
This is hardly a fantastic book, I can't shake the feeling it could have been a lot better. I enjoyed it for the most part, though. A few things did bother me, mostly the fact I never liked Geoffrey Thornton; I wish Jill had stayed with Miles. Their relationship, though abnormal,...more

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Nov 08, 2011 Elizabeth (Miss Eliza) rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: library, fiction

Jill wanders the streets of a town she once knew in desperate times. How things have changed knowing that she could now have anything in any shop window along the high street. Of course, she doesn't want or need for anything since she married thedistinguished actor Miles Quentin. Miles is in town to reopen the theatre by testing out a new play that has been adapted from television before moving to the West End. Jill's life is no longer the chaotic life of a stage manager. Now she's there for Mil...more Jill wanders the streets of a town she once knew in desperate times. How things have changed knowing that she could now have anything in any shop window along the high street. Of course, she doesn't want or need for anything since she married the distinguished actor Miles Quentin. Miles is in town to reopen the theatre by testing out a new play that has been adapted from television before moving to the West End. Jill's life is no longer the chaotic life of a stage manager. Now she's there for Miles. She keeps him on schedule, writes his correspondences, buys little presents for the cast, she is wife and personal assistant in one. While out on errands for Miles she wanders into a shop she remembers frequenting in her past. She wants to buy a box of chocolates for the young lad in the play, Cyril. He's never acted on stage and her and Miles want to give him all the encouragement they can. This day proves to be a fateful day. She runs into Geoffrey Thornton, a member for Parliament whom she met once at a function. They get to talking and she learns that his two daughters, Robin and Kit are huge fans of Miles'. They agree to arrange a meeting. Miles, as well as Jill, are charmed by the girls and soon when Miles is busy with the play, she spends all her free time with the girls.

Provincial runs are short though, and after the week the play packs up for London, as do the Thorntons. They all agree to meet often once back in the city, where Jill and Miles are met by their horribly austere and modern new apartment which they loath. It does not look like the play is going to have as receptive an audience in London and the bets are on that it won't last above three weeks. Miles starts to desperately engage Jill into thinking about what they want to do after the play folds. Perhaps an autumn in the country, some time abroad, a new home. Because while she can't place her finger on when or how, things have changed between her and Miles. It all comes out one day when Thornton takes her to see a possible house for Miles' "autumn in the country." Jill is married to Miles because of convenience. Miles is gay. The girls have long suspected this to be the case and have been encouraging their father with the "Thornton Take-Over Scheme" wherein Jill will be there new mother, seeing as their first nymphomaniac, dipsomaniac mother wasn't the best. Things are made all the more easier by the fact that Jill fell in love with Georffrey at first sight, as he did with her. But Jill will not leave Miles after all he has done for her. She is caught between a rock and a hard place and then, just when the pressure couldn't be any worse a scandal is set in motion.

After my second and most recent foray into Dodie Smith's back catalog thanks to my library, I was hesitant to continue. The Girl from the Candle-lit Bath being perhaps one of the worst books I've read in awhile. I am very glad to whomever put this book on hold at the library so that I had to read it right away, because one can't just return a book to the library unread, it goes against Blue Stocking code! I found the characters sweet and endearing. It Ends with Revelations gave me hope that perhaps I read Smith's worst work and now all I had was wonderful books to look forward to, all piled on my desk! The thing that struck me as groundbreaking about this work is the open discussion of homosexuality. Dodie Smith, spending many years in the theatre industry, obviously didn't have the prejudices of many others in society and therefore homosexuality is represented as it is, just the way people are. Robin and Kit are amazingly refreshing in their attitudes. They where raised by tolerate loving people, their grandmother being a friend of Oscar Wilde. To think this book was written in 1967! Many people don't have this openness of mind to this day. There where times when sometimes the slang to refer to homosexuals was a bit dated, so it seems a little derogatory. But keep in mind that while sometimes the words are a product of their times, the feelings behind them are amazingly progressive.

When one thinks that this book came out the year the sexual offences act finally decriminalised homosexuality in England, you realize how amazingly progressive it is. Jill being Miles' beard, which, lets face it, still happens a lot in Hollywood, and the way the Thorntons open up there hearts and in return change everyones lives for the better makes this a very uplifting book. Of course Dodie tries to throw in a bit of a scandal at the end, which wasn't worthy of the characters or their relationships, but she's an author who dabbles in theatre, you have to forgive her need to sometimes throw in an obstacle or two. I'm also glad to see that according to Amazon, this book is going back into print early next year! A book this fun and progressive and modern should not be confined to dusty shelves where the librarian has to basically go into the catacombs to unearth it for a devoted reader like myself!(less)

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Jan 02, 2013 Michelle rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned-books, books-i-read-in-2013

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I bought this book, along with two other books by Dodie Smith after reading I Capture The Castle, which was one of the best books I have ever read. Where to start? Honestly, I found this book to be very unexpected and I really didn't know what to think about it. In the story, Jill is married to Miles and they are in the theater business. She becomes good friends with the Thortons, a widower and his two daughters. After spending time with Geoffrey Thornton, Jill discovers that she is attracted to...more

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Oct 06, 2012 Damaskcat rated it 4 of 5 stars

Jill is happily married to Miles – a well known actor. They are staying in a spa town for a short run of a new play in which Miles is starring. Jill meets Robin and Kit, teenage daughters of Geoffrey Thornton an MP and barrister. The meeting will have far reaching consequences for everyone involved.

I enjoyed the theatrical background of this interesting story and I liked the characters as well and thought they were well drawn and believable. I especially liked the two girls with their lively con...more

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Nov 16, 2012 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-read-2012

This is such a curious book - so modern and yet so very dated at the same time. The attitudes to homosexuality are (on the whole) sensible and enlightened - and yet they are only revealed because of the 'sham' marriage of a gay man and a straight woman, which to me just seems awkward and contrived.
Again, as with most of Dodie Smith's books that aren't I Capture The Castle, the characters lean towards caricatures. The daughters are annoyingly precocious, the actor is wooden and Jill is really unb...more

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Apr 12, 2011 Jodysegal rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: high school and older

Shelves: adult

2.5 Jill Quentin is the happily devoted wife of Miles Quentin, a master of the British stage and screen. But when Jill falls for another man and his two daughters, it gradually becomes apparent that her marriage to Miles is one of friendship and that he is gay. Smith manages some of the charm of her writing in I Conquer the Castle, though with much more melodrama, and her depiction of the world of the stage is fun and believable. The marriage between Miles and Jill is also well done and nuanced,...more

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Jun 06, 2012 Hilary rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm a great reader of vintage fiction, always try to read in context, and in principle I love Dodie Smith - but this is a shocker. So wrong on so many levels, as they say, and wildly implausible to boot. Published in 1967, I have no doubt it was taking a very 'advanced' line on homosexuality for its time, but (view spoiler)...more

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Oct 09, 2012 V. Briceland rated it 4 of 5 stars

The central premise of Dodie Smith's It Ends with Revelations isn't even mentioned until over halfway through the novel: its heroine, Jill, is knowingly married to a gay man. There's no scandal to it—no shocking discovery, nothing that the heroine didn't know before she entered into the arrangement. It's all very genteel, as are most of the relationships in Smith's works—as is the follow-up plot, in which an MP and his family conspire to un-marry Jill from her husband and take her over for the o...more The central premise of Dodie Smith's It Ends with Revelations isn't even mentioned until over halfway through the novel: its heroine, Jill, is knowingly married to a gay man. There's no scandal to it—no shocking discovery, nothing that the heroine didn't know before she entered into the arrangement. It's all very genteel, as are most of the relationships in Smith's works—as is the follow-up plot, in which an MP and his family conspire to un-marry Jill from her husband and take her over for the own.

Smith's doing some subtle and sympathetic writing on a delicate topic, here. The latter is perhaps not unexpected; Smith was great friends with Christopher Isherwood during the height of his writing career, after all. She manages to address what was still a shocking subject with great sensitivity and aplomb.

What's disappointing, somewhat, is that the novel's plotting might be too subtle for most readers to appreciate. Most of the fighting Jill's husband does to keep her takes place in the book's earliest pages, long before the average reader would have picked up on the book's central struggle. Also, among all of Smith's heroines, Jill is the most frustratingly passive. Even at the book's climax, she's allowing the men in her life to negotiate with each other for who gets her in his life; she never seems to make an actual choice of her own. She's less a person than a utility to be annexed.

Worse still, the book's shockingly old-fashioned. A casual reader picking up this tale of arranged marriages and homosexual blackmail for the first time might well assume it was written during the mid-century time period of I Capture the Castle. Yet It Ends with Revelations was published almost a solid two decades later, in 1968; to consider that it came out in the year famous for the Summer of Love betrays how very much out of touch Smith's writing was with current events. Mere months later, the Stonewall riots would make this quaint and genteel novel look like an archaeological relic.

Still, for its sweet insight into the workings of the English theater, the book's a pleasant enough read. And Dodie Smith's characteristic charm counts for a lot. Fans of I Capture the Castle and The Town in Bloom will enjoy another volume in the author's sweet re-creation of a lost and respectable age.(less)

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Oct 25, 2012 Melyssa rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bought-on-vacation

This is an odd book, and I guess some of my issues with it can be explained because it was published in 1967. I can't really say what my problem was without spoiling a plot point in the book, but I'll just say I disagree with the descriptions of some people as "normal" and therefore implying that others are not normal. In the first half of the book nothing really happens and then bam -- weird thing happens. I also found the daughters in the book to be creepy. I've never read this author before b...more

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Oct 15, 2012 Sonia Gensler added it

I hardly know what to say that wouldn't spoil the major reveal in this novel. I started the novel without a clue and it had quite an impact on me, so I'll just leave it alone. Not a perfect novel, but very charming and certainly worth reading. Loved the insight into life on and off the stage. And I may just take Kit's advice and look into the novels by Ivy Compton-Burnett.

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Nov 08, 2011 JoyfulK rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who like understated human dramas

Shelves: womens-lives-good-reads, all-around-great-reads

Beautifully written, understated, and no doubt controversial when it was published in 1967, this book is well worth reading, and I have no idea how to describe it properly without spoilers. It's a drama, but it's understated, like I said. It's about a marriage, and yet not. It's about the theatre, and yet not. It's about people I enjoyed getting to know. It's an artifact of its time, and yet not out of place in 2011. What it doesn't have, that I might have expected, is the outrageous sense of hu...more

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Jul 21, 2009 Susalu Szegda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: lit

reminds me of Iris Murdoch a bit

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Apr 19, 2013 Lesley rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I adore Dodie Smith but was definitely a little let down by this book. You can watch my full review here - http://youtu.be/a1SE3tvOMVg

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Apr 16, 2012 Lindsaygail rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2012

I'm waffling between two and three stars on this one. While I enjoyed it, there were parts of the plot that didn't quite work for me, and the main romance of the story kind of left me cold. Here were characters proclaiming how intensely they had fallen in love with each other, and I found it hard to believe. Even though I like Dodie Smith's style very much, and I found most of the characters likeable as well, their actions didn't always make sense to me.

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Apr 10, 2012 Kirsty rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-for-review, received-for-review, bookgeeks-and-nudge, read-2012, best-of-2012, beautiful-covers

My review of It Ends With Revelations can be found here:
http://www.nudgemenow.com/article/it-...

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May 19, 2013 Sarah marked it as to-read

Shelves: librivox

May 20, 2013 Eleni rated it 2 of 5 stars

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May 17, 2013 Ellen World marked it as to-read · review of another edition

May 14, 2013 Sabrina Inserra marked it as to-read

May 10, 2013 Claire rated it 4 of 5 stars

May 07, 2013 Renee rated it 3 of 5 stars

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May 04, 2013 Christine marked it as to-read

May 02, 2013 Francesca Blom rated it 4 of 5 stars

May 01, 2013 Kaleton marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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About Dodie Smith

Born Dorothy Gladys Smith in Lancashire, England, Dodie Smith was raised in Manchester (her memoir is titled "A Childhood in Manchester"). She was just an infant when her father died, and she grew up fatherless until age 14, when her mother remarried and the family moved to London. There she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and tried for a career as an actress, but with little success...more

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“And I suspect that, to the eyes of love, love shows. I knew about you as well as about myself, almost from the beginning.” — 2 people liked it

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