<![CDATA[The Death of the Heart]]>

false <![CDATA[The Death of the Heart]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171229837m/91494.jpg 91494 13 Five words of advice on reading Elizabeth Bowen: Resist the urge to skim. In The Death of the Heart, Bowen's writing rolls ever onward, accruing the sensations and ironies of conscious living till the final effect is massive. This is not prose for people who like their fiction with a cool, Calvin Klein-like minimalism. Bowen's people are keenly aware, and she seems to catalogue every sweaty moment, every betraying glance. The reader must stay right there with her, because hidden among lengthy descriptions of sea air and drawing-room politics are pithy asides worthy of great humorists: "Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends." Skimmers miss out. The Death of the Heart is Bowen's most perfectly made book. Portia, an orphan, comes to live in London with her half-brother, Thomas, and his wife, Anna. A child of sin raised in a series of shabby French hotels, Portia is possessed of a kind of terrible innocence. Like Chance the Gardener in pigtails, she literally can't comprehend evil or unkind motives. Unfortunately for her, she falls in with Anna's friend Eddie, who seems to be made entirely of bad motives. Though the plot follows Portia's relationship with Eddie, the novel's real tension lies between Portia and Anna, as the girl comes to grief against the shoals of Anna's glittering, urbane cynicism. But the book transcends the theme of innocence corrupted. As in Graham Greene's The Quiet American, Bowen inverts the formula to show the destructive power of innocence itself: <blockquote>Innocence so constantly finds itself in a false position that inwardly innocent people learn to be disingenuous.... Incurable strangers to the world, they never cease to exact a heroic happiness. Their singleness, their ruthlessness, their one continuous wish makes them bound to be cruel, and to suffer cruelty. The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet--and when they do, their victims lie strewn all around.</blockquote> Bowen has a fine eye for such shadings of morality, but finer still is her understanding of the way humans bump up against the material world. Her writing on weather, both emotional and meteorological, compares with the best of Henry James: "One's first day by the sea, one's being feels salt, strong, resilient, and hollow--like a seaweed pod not giving under the heel." Always a sensitive observer of the way we live, in her lesser books Bowen deals in mind games and then delivers trumped-up, bloody endings. In The Death of the Heart, she keeps all the action between her characters' ears, and comes up with one of the great midcentury psychological novels. --Claire Dederer 2225358 book 1938 The Death of the Heart total:360|5:78|4:126|3:100|2:36|1:20| 360 1286 754 53 2 1 false false Fri May 05 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Fri Jun 05 19:38:01 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 05 19:50:25 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Aug 07 10:30:15 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 23 16:09:06 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 07 10:30:15 -0700 2009
I had a much better and detailed review written, however my session timed out or somethin...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Mar 28 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 05 15:24:07 -0800 2009 Sat Mar 28 13:27:09 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 2 false false Thu Nov 20 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Nov 19 10:44:32 -0800 2008 Thu Nov 20 19:37:51 -0800 2008
About a 16 year old orphan, Portia, who comes home to England after living abroad (almost in exile) with her father and his mistress-turned-second-wife. ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Sep 24 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 20 13:03:16 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 24 19:16:36 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Nov 04 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jun 15 21:48:42 -0700 2009 Wed Nov 04 22:15:20 -0800 2009 1 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Oct 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Nov 24 21:17:37 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 24 21:19:52 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Sun Feb 08 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 18 09:52:04 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 18 09:53:50 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Nov 14 08:25:04 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 14 08:26:19 -0800 2009 2 0 true false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Jun 08 13:23:11 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 08 13:30:47 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Wed Feb 04 03:54:28 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 04 03:54:51 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 02 07:58:20 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 12 10:52:24 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue Jul 14 09:43:17 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 14 09:43:17 -0700 2009 1 0 false false Tue Jan 06 07:38:51 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 06 07:39:21 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Sat Aug 01 21:05:40 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 01 21:06:27 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun Jun 07 04:32:32 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 12 07:13:07 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Thu Feb 19 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 19 12:43:02 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 19 12:43:17 -0800 2009 birdlashes.livejournal.com]]> 3 0 false false Tue Jun 30 19:36:28 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 30 19:36:42 -0700 2009 1 0 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Jan 06 20:17:40 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 06 20:25:34 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1998 Tue Jul 15 10:07:50 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 15 10:12:33 -0700 2008 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=91494