It Ends with Revelations

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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Stephanie
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
Donna LaValley
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
Cara M
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
Melee
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
Elizabeth (Miss Eliza)
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
Michelle
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Damaskcat
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
Mary
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
Jodysegal
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
Hilary
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)[ the idea that a woman needs to be 'rescued' from a loving marriage with a homosexual is impossible for me to accept on the terms set out here - that the woman is wasting her...more
V. Briceland
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
Melyssa
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
Sonia Gensler
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.
JoyfulK
Nov 08, 2011 JoyfulK rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who like understated human dramas
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
Susalu Szegda
reminds me of Iris Murdoch a bit
Lesley
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
Lindsaygail
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.
Sarah
May 19, 2013 Sarah marked it as to-read
Shelves: librivox
Alba
May 18, 2013 Alba marked it as to-read
Heather
May 18, 2013 Heather marked it as to-read
Ellen World
May 17, 2013 Ellen World marked it as to-read  ·  review of another edition
Sabrina Inserra
May 14, 2013 Sabrina Inserra marked it as to-read
Jess
May 07, 2013 Jess marked it as to-read
Christine
May 04, 2013 Christine marked it as to-read
Kaleton
May 01, 2013 Kaleton marked it as to-read  ·  review of another edition
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It Ends With Revelations (Paperback)
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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
More about Dodie Smith...
I Capture the Castle The Hundred and One Dalmatians The Starlight Barking (The Hundred and One Dalmatians, #2) The New Moon With the Old The Town in Bloom

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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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