The Death of the Heart

Mar 23, 2011 Mariel rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: virgin with a memory

Recommended to Mariel by: virgin without a memory

Shelves: rubber-ring

This book is one of the reasons why I believe stories are redeeming. Like food, second chances, bringing back to life a deadened heart.

I love this book intensely as if it has some kind of gravitational pull or hold on me that reminds me of it during times of feeling what I cannot put name to. Frame of reference stuff. I found that I love it more as time passes and the life it still lives in my mind takes its place beside some of the most important moments I've had (um or something I've just made...more

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Jul 04, 2011 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: kindred-characters

Portia observes with a young girl's receptiveness. Elizabeth Bowen observes Portia with a woman's cool, discerning eye.

This book demonstrates how a predatory man will tell you, and tell you, and tell you that he's predatory...and how a lonely, young girl will refuse to see it. It demonstrates how a jaded, older woman can resent a young girl's innocence with inexplicable venom. Bowen shows all this and more with beauty, wit, and grace. Her book is about innocence, corrupted. But Bowen, herself, i...more

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Mar 03, 2013 Angus rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-time-100-novels, modern-library-100, the-classics-club, reviewed-and-blogged

Original post at Book Rhapsody.

***

Keep Your Diary Safe

The Death of the Heart is a novel about the almost year-long stay of a recently orphaned child in the pre-war London. Portia, sixteen years old, lives for the first time in the household of Thomas Quayne, her half-brother, and Anna Quayne, her half-brother's wife. During her stay with these family members whom she barely knows, she meets and falls in love with Eddie, a fledgling writer who is notoriously known for his Bohemian lifestyle and w...more

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Jun 20, 2011 Melee rated it 4 of 5 stars

From the back description, I was expecting this to be a major seduction story like, er, well, I can't think of any examples, though they are a dime a dozen. Anyhow, it wasn't; it was about the seduction of the mind: mental, not physical. It was Portia's mind, of course, that was seduced and inevitably, betrayed. (Is that why this is called a psychological novel?)

I rather liked Portia. She wasn't obnoxiously pathetic as I thought she would be. She wasn't when she was away from Eddie, that is. Par...more From the back description, I was expecting this to be a major seduction story like, er, well, I can't think of any examples, though they are a dime a dozen. Anyhow, it wasn't; it was about the seduction of the mind: mental, not physical. It was Portia's mind, of course, that was seduced and inevitably, betrayed. (Is that why this is called a psychological novel?)

I rather liked Portia. She wasn't obnoxiously pathetic as I thought she would be. She wasn't when she was away from Eddie, that is. Parts without him she was a dreamy loner type which I identify with since I am one. But she was extremely guileless, captivated by Eddie whose faults and inconsistencies she was blind to. I don't suppose I can cast the first stone, though; the attractions of girls are mysterious things and there is little I wouldn't do for someone who shows me kindness at a time when I'm feeling sadly at loose ends.
Eddie was indeed a Cad (with a capital 'C', yes.) who was in love with the sound of the words coming out of his mouth. Actually, he was not present in the flesh as often as I assumed he would be. Anna was the antagonist more than anyone.

Elizabeth Bowen told the story somewhat indifferently, I thought. Just in the sense she never tried to make you love (or hate, even) any of her characters. She just told it like it was, so to speak. Though she mostly portrayed her character's pettiness and absurdities, she also showed them during moments of worry, vulnerability, and insecurity. Those moments really resounded with me.
And her prose! She wrote little masterpieces of sentences and paragraphs full of brilliant imagery which made my little writer's heart pitter-pat with admiration and, of course, envy. Though some of her thoughts were dense and required more concentration on my part to grasp their meaning.

I suppose there were greater nuances and themes to this novel that I missed, as I am far from being the most discerning reader, but still I enjoyed this book and that is what matters most, in my opinion. Perhaps I shall read this 30 years from now and see what I get out of it. (Sometimes youth feels like a ball and chain.)
Incidentally, I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I was going to and I cannot think, or express at least, what it was that I liked. I know I really enjoyed Elizabeth Bowen's writing. She deserves all the praise she gets in that respect.

Sorry Sarah, this isn't much of a coherent or compelling review - The Death of the Heart may be doomed to languish on your bedside table a bit longer. ;)(less)

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Jun 12, 2012 Seth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: english-literature

For a review of Elizabeth Bowen’s Death of the Heart, you can’t do much better than Jonathan Yardley’s review published in the Washington Post in 2005: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
The themes of this novel are betrayal and innocence. As Yardley points out, the author believed that innocence must “be vanquished by experience.”

I would just add an observation about the communication styles displayed in this coming-of-age novel set in British upper and middle-class society prior to World...more

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Oct 11, 2011 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-century-classics, english-classic, england-between-the-wars, coming-of-age, j-yardley-2nd-readings

The Death of the Heart chronicles the fate of a young girl who is left in the care of indifferent, and at times, resentful adults. Portia has lived a stunted life with her mother and father. Having had middle age affair, her father find himself with a pregnant mistress. His wife makes a project of directing his enterance into a new life with his mistress and soon to be baby, Portia. However, this life exacts banishment from England and wandering from one second rate European hotel to another. Th...more The Death of the Heart chronicles the fate of a young girl who is left in the care of indifferent, and at times, resentful adults. Portia has lived a stunted life with her mother and father. Having had middle age affair, her father find himself with a pregnant mistress. His wife makes a project of directing his enterance into a new life with his mistress and soon to be baby, Portia. However, this life exacts banishment from England and wandering from one second rate European hotel to another. This had been Portia's life until her parents' deaths uncovers a request from her now dead father which plays upon her half-brother's sense of duty. It is just too bad that that sense of duty isn't coupled with concern. Wrapped up in his own life, he is put out whenever he must extend beyond it, whether that be spending time with his wife and her friends or attempting to make his half-sister at home. His wife is even worse. A bundle of egotism and careful orchestrator of her life, she is the worst possible woman for a sensitive, perceptive girl to be cast upon.

Besides having too much time on her hands, Portia had never been properly introduced into the vagaries of social custom. Soon she is at a loss and ready to entrust her heart to the first person to show her some interest. How she navigates the falsity of her brother and sister-in-law's world and comes to a clearer less innocent understanding of society is the principal concern of the story. Besides following the lines of the classic coming-of-age story, Bowen attempts also to examine, and with a harsh lens, 1930s London. She is an insightful psychologist and brutal observer. Among this assortment if soulless urbanites, the author does create a handful of character with redeeming qualities, but for the most part modern London is a minefield of deceit where one must walk carefully among the artfully constructed personas of the genteel. But all is not lost. Contact with Portia seems that it might be a cure for the self-centered. Of course this depends on how much one makes of some of the conversation at the end. Much of this is oblique and of questionable resolve.

At times the book is uncomfortable reading. It is hard to see such a sweet girl fall victim to a heartless society and made the plaything of hopeless cad, though there are some moments in which kind people try to ease her difficulties.(less)

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May 12, 2013 Leon rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations.

In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the thirties, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home

...more

The Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations.

In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the thirties, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home in London.There she encounters the attractive, carefree cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and her fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reaason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal--and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature.

Amazon.com Review

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:

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.

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

Review

"A witty, lucid, and beautiful psychological novel.. . . By far her best book."
--The New Yorker

"Bowen is a major writer. . . . She is what happened after Bloomsbury . . . the link that connects Virginia Woolf with Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark." --Victoria Glendinning

"Bowen writes with both art and skillful artifice. . . . [The] quality of restraint, of the unsaid, gives her novel its curious tautness and intensity." --The New York Times

"[The Death of the Heart] manages to make a major statement about human character. . . . We finish the book with that sense fiction nowadays rarely communicates, of life's having been mysteriously enlarged." --The New Yorker

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Mar 18, 2013 Al rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 d

...more

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:

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.

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

Review

"A witty, lucid, and beautiful psychological novel.. . . By far her best book."
--_The New Yorker_

"Bowen is a major writer. . . . She is what happened after Bloomsbury . . . the link that connects Virginia Woolf with Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark." --Victoria Glendinning

"Bowen writes with both art and skillful artifice. . . . [The] quality of restraint, of the unsaid, gives her novel its curious tautness and intensity." --_The New York Times_

"[The Death of the Heart] manages to make a major statement about human character. . . . We finish the book with that sense fiction nowadays rarely communicates, of life's having been mysteriously enlarged." --_The New Yorker_

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Jan 13, 2013 Gayle rated it 5 of 5 stars

More later- but how did I not know about this writer???? Every sentence crafted elegantly- it makes me weep...I found a writer I love like I love Virginia wolf.... I'm not quite finished with book so more later---- but this woman has chops!! Thank you Washington Post writer jonathon yardley--for writing a 2005 review about an older book ---that caught my eye. I clipped his review 7 years ago and so glad I saved it!! Bravo Elizabeth Bowen!!
From his review:"Bowen returned to these themes over and...more

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Dec 19, 2012 Snort rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-naive-voice-of-reason

Elizabeth Bowen, I’m ashamed to say, has only arrived on my radar recently. She swiftly joins my list of “Elizabeth Luminaries” including Taylor, Jenkins, von Arnim and George. On the cover, The New Yorker describes this as “…by far her best book”; this rings alarm bells as I never want to read the best book first, for fear all that comes later fall flat.

This novel somehow represents the life cycle of a flower, and to me, it is just as much about the 30 year old Anna, as it is about the 16 year...more

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May 20, 2012 Liz rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: time-s-top-one-hundred

The death of the heart is a story of a teenage orphan named Portia, set sometime between the 1930's and 1940's. ( I forget.. ) Portia, after her Mother's death moves in with her half brother Thomas and his wife, Anna. The latter, whom seems very rigid and controlling, sets Portia's downfall you could say. But that probably would have happened anyway, with a teenager involved.
Portia is, the over wrote, obvious awkward teenager and ends up falling in love with Anna's friend Eddie. Eddie being stup...more

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Nov 23, 2011 Dona Matthews rated it 4 of 5 stars

I found this book psychologically provocative, emotionally compelling, and deeply annoying, in about equal parts. Set in upper middle class London in the 1930s, it is the story of a 16 year old girl named Portia whose parents have both died. She has been taken in for a year by her much older brother and his wife, on the strength of the father's deathbed request. Portia is bristling with feelings and perceptions, and desperately needs someone to talk to, but her brother is emotionally distant, an...more

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Sep 16, 2010 Bruce rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a curiously unsatisfying novel, intriguing and frustrating by turns. Is it a coming-of-age story? In some senses, yes. But it is oddly inconclusive, and, for a sixteen year old, the protagonist,Portia, seems too young and naïve. Is this the way it was in London in the thirties when the book was written? She seems more like a 12 or 13 year old and that makes the narrative seem implausible. Her sentimental love affair with the flawed and despicable Eddie, who himself is 23, seems stilted a...more This is a curiously unsatisfying novel, intriguing and frustrating by turns. Is it a coming-of-age story? In some senses, yes. But it is oddly inconclusive, and, for a sixteen year old, the protagonist,Portia, seems too young and naïve. Is this the way it was in London in the thirties when the book was written? She seems more like a 12 or 13 year old and that makes the narrative seem implausible. Her sentimental love affair with the flawed and despicable Eddie, who himself is 23, seems stilted and childish. The social practices and ambiance of this novel seem dated, although the social unease and the ambiguities of interpersonal relationships are timeless. Bowen is sensitive to these subtleties, and her descriptions are careful and accurate. The contemporary reader does well if he can translate the more general and universal observations out of the context of this novel into the present day. The novel is thus at time moderately enjoyable, even as one has the feeling that one is reading a period piece.

For me the highlights of the book were Bowen’s descriptions and philosophical asides that were acute and made the book worth reading. Some were brief: “They’d rather no past - not have the past, that is to say. No wonder they don’t rightly know what they’re doing. Those without memories don’t know what is what.” “Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.”

Others are longer, like this description of Matchett, the maid: “Matchett...had an austere, ironical straight face, flesh padded smoothly over the strong structure of bone. Her strong springy lusterless hair was centre parted and drawn severely back; she wore no cap. Habitually, she walked with her eyes down, and her vein-marbled eyelids were unconciliating. Her mouth, at this moment stubbornly inexpressive, still had a crease at each end from her last unwilling smile. Her expression, her attitude were held-in and watchful.”

And: “The senses bound our feeling world: there is an abrupt break where their power stops…The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We have really no absent friends…Willing absence (however unwilling) is the negation of love.”

I would have liked to have been able to commend this book with more enthusiasm, but I ended being ambivalent about it. The lyrical passages were moving and impressive, but there was much that was to me implausible about the story, and that detracted from the narrative. That being said, I did not object to the ambiguity of the ending.
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Jun 05, 2009 Colleen rated it 2 of 5 stars

I had a difficult time getting started with this downer of a book because Bowen's writing style is dense and, at times, confusing. From time to time she would lapse into sermons or analysis and my eyes would glaze over and I'd lose my focus. But eventually I got into the story and decided it was OK. There's not much of a plot and there's certainly little action or excitement. It's mainly a psychological story. There are lots of characters playing head games with each other. They're primarily wea...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Ali rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a novel I know I read a very long time ago. No doubt though, it was when I was too young to appreciate Elizabeth Bowen’s writing. She is something of an acquired taste I suppose; I know some people consider her to be difficult.
Elizabeth Bowen is absolutely brilliant at completely capturing the world that she is writing about. Emotionally cold upper class people in a large, virtually empty London house. Laced with secrets and adolescent awkwardness, the bitterness of teenage betrayal, Th...more This is a novel I know I read a very long time ago. No doubt though, it was when I was too young to appreciate Elizabeth Bowen’s writing. She is something of an acquired taste I suppose; I know some people consider her to be difficult.
Elizabeth Bowen is absolutely brilliant at completely capturing the world that she is writing about. Emotionally cold upper class people in a large, virtually empty London house. Laced with secrets and adolescent awkwardness, the bitterness of teenage betrayal, The Death of the Heart is an exquisitely written novel. When I look back over this novel, I think of fur coats and London fog, tea by the fire, the sudden ringing of telephones and the desolate sound of heels on an empty hall floor.
Having recently lost her mother, Portia is just sixteen when she comes to stay with her much older half-brother Thomas and his wife the distant cold Anna. Anna takes a dislike to her; Thomas though is embarrassed by Portia, who was the result of an affair between his father and Portia’s mother. Neither Thomas or Anna have any idea how to deal with Portia, she is in a sense left to her own devices, and develops a much better relationship with the maid than with either of them. Eddie, a younger friend of Anna’s is selfish, shallow and often cruel. He enjoys toying with the innocent Portia, caring nothing for the consequences he allows Portia to fall in love with him, she hangs on his every word, believes in everything he says absolutely. Portia has not learnt the art of reticence – and wears her heart on her sleeve, she is ripe for heartbreak at the hands of the cool and emotionally stunted people that surround her.
“Darling, I don't want you; I've got no place for you; I only want what you give. I don't want the whole of anyone.... What you want is the whole of me-isn't it, isn't it?-and the whole of me isn't there for anybody. In that full sense you want me I don't exist.”
Shortly after her arrival, Portia’s brother and sister in law – go abroad – there is no suggestion that Portia will go with them. Instead she is sent to the seaside, to stay with Mrs Heccomb Anna’s former governess. Mrs Heccomb’s step children Daphne and Dickie draw Portia into their social set – and Portia invites Eddie to stay. The weekend that Eddie spends with Portia and the Heccomb’s is an uncomfortable one, and Bowen shows the vulnerable awkwardness of Portia as she struggles to make sense of Eddie’s actions and motivations, brilliantly. Upon her return to London, Portia begins to sense the betrayals of those she loves.
Elizabeth Bowen’s writing is just sublime, her characters that drive the novel are marvellous creations, and their voices ring out in cold clear upper class accents. Each sentence is constructed just perfectly.
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Apr 11, 2012 Dinah Küng rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Years ago, a friend who knew I loved Trollope, Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark told me to catch up with the novelist Elizabeth Bowen. I found this copy of "The Death of the Heart" at a used bookseller's stall in Nyon, Switzerland for five francs. (I often pile up with books left by the English-language expat community at his stall for resale. You can often divine the personality of the departed reader from the sudden flush of books from one library.)

I'm loving this already, despite it's slightly s...more

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Mar 25, 2013 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who like their sadnesses understated

Recommended to Mark by: Eugene

Shelves: bookclub-reads, books-to-unsettle

Happy that few of us are aware of the world until we are already in league with it

The story covers a period of some six months in which a newly orphaned 16 year old comes to live with her half brother and his wife. There she keeps a diary, becomes infatuated with another slightly older but still youngish lad, finds he is not quite the boy she had hoped or imagined and gets a bit upset.

Not much more happens then this really and yet i find myself giving it four stars, encouraging you to read it an...more

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Jun 17, 2012 Daryl rated it 1 of 5 stars

Since this book was written in 1938, it's considered a classic. If it came out today, it would be chick lit, as it tells the story of a 16-year-old girl, an orphan, who comes to live with her brother and sister-in-law in London, and promptly falls in love with a young man, who despite being poorly described in the book, is referred to on the back cover of the edition I read as a "philanderer." (Great word, by the way.) This book reminded me a lot of Edith Wharton, and not in a good way. (Wharton...more

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Feb 20, 2012 Rusty rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classic

Portia, 16, has lost her mother and is living with her half-brother and his wife. Portia is quiet, reserved, and misses her mother intensely. Her brother's wife, Anna, doesn't like her. It may be that Anna is jealous and wishes she were as young as Portia. Portia wants so much to have someone like her, even love her. This is may be why she is attracted to the flamboyant, undependable and silly Eddie, Anna's friend.

The story also focuses on Anna who married Portia's brother, Thomas, on the reboun...more

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Feb 07, 2010 Chana rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: british, fiction-family-drama, released-through-bookcrossing

What I really loved about this book was the language; charming, witty, educated and redolent of another era. The author published this book in 1938 and you can tell that when you read it. This book is not about another time, it IS another time. I didn't actually care for the story that much and the ending is a non-ending. The whole last chapter is a long and boring analysis of behavior, responsibility, love and friendship. The story involves a 16 year old orphan, Portia, who goes to live in Lond...more

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Jan 30, 2012 Veronica rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Veronica by: Modern Library's 100 Best Novels

This read left me somewhat puzzled. While reading, and upon completing The Death of the Heart, I paused to ponder my overall impression and then, as now, I’m still unsure. At times it seemed a silly tale of a naive orphan and her unwelcoming family and then struck me as brilliant writing with keen insight into various psyches. I’m still not sure…

A young little lassie is suddenly orphaned and sent to live with the half-brother, Thomas Quayne, whom she barely knows and his self-absorbed wife, Anna...more

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Feb 01, 2012 John rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

I've given this audiobook high marks, when I have doubts I would've been able to get through the print version. At first, I wasn't sure about Kellgren's rather plummy accent, until I realized that she was capable of down-shifting to servants, etc. as necessary. As a matter of fact, the housekeeper Matchett was probably my favorite "voice" of all of them.
As far as plot goes, although Thomas and Anna are her brother and sister-in-law it's hard not to think of them more as estranged father and (un...more

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Apr 15, 2013 Daryn rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the story of a sweet and gentle sixteen-year old girl who comes to live in a manor house with her older brother and his wife, a childless and unhappy couple, after her beloved father dies. Through her indomitable spirit, she forces all of the cynical older people around her to either do the right thing, or failing that, to take her seriously and acknowledge her point of view. While she is doomed to lose her innocence, it is heartening to see her unsettle so many prejudices and deceitful...more

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Aug 07, 2009 Anna Maria rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: older-fiction

I read this book because of this quote (from the novel, of course) that I came across one day: "Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things."

I had a much better and detailed review written, however my session timed out or something and it was lost, so I am too angry to write another one of similar quality!!!

My thoughts:

1. There are several sentences with a recurring and pointless structure. For example: "But only when they were NOT out she did NOT c...more

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Mar 12, 2012 drea rated it 4 of 5 stars

I should start by saying that I am horrible at writing about books I love, because when I truly love something, I get tongue-tied and bashful and feel like I can only express myself correctly if I am allowed to speak in exclamation points and cartwheels. But even though my heart started up in an illogical panic as soon as I saw the white expanse of the review box, I am trying with this one, gosh darn it, because, oh! It is lovely, and deserves all of the cartwheels.

I forget what made me origina...more I should start by saying that I am horrible at writing about books I love, because when I truly love something, I get tongue-tied and bashful and feel like I can only express myself correctly if I am allowed to speak in exclamation points and cartwheels. But even though my heart started up in an illogical panic as soon as I saw the white expanse of the review box, I am trying with this one, gosh darn it, because, oh! It is lovely, and deserves all of the cartwheels.

I forget what made me originally pick up a copy of The Death of the Heart. I wish I remembered, because I would like to thank it, along with whatever made the universe align a few weeks ago for this book to stalk me. Because suddenly it was everywhere that I turned. Mentioned in a blurb on Bookslut; lying innocently on a coworker's desk; sitting among a random browsing of the Modern Library's Best 100 Novels. And then I opened up a box of books that had been sitting in the corner for six months, and there it was, right on top of a stack of forty other forgotten books. "Okay!" I said. "I give! But just so you know, I am not reading this dictionary, which I also put in this box for some inexplicable reason."

And then I read the first 100 pages and was hooked, even though I am going to have a hell of a time explaining why. This is one of those books that has less of a traditional plot, and is more a million wonderful tiny insights that eventually decide to team up at the last moment for a lasting impact. Basically, The New Yorker was not lying when it called it "pscyhological," so if intense character portraits and a relentless mission to figure out what really makes people tick are not your thing, then it's probably going to leave you cold. But if they are, you should just save yourself some trouble and underline the whole dang novel.

Portia, sixteen and recently orphaned, has come to live in the town house of her reserved half-brother, Thomas, and his outwardly friendly, but inwardly unfeeling wife, Anna. Portia and Thomas were not close, as Portia's existence was the reason his mother demanded a late-in-life divorce from their father, but Thomas has granted his father's last request and invited Portia to stay the year to see "how things work out." For Portia, this stable existence is a marked difference from the string of coastal European hotels that she used to call home, and she is having trouble adapting, a struggle she chronicles in a diary that is secretly being read by an increasingly resentful Anna without her knowledge. The only people she feels close to are the house's head maid, Matchett, and Anna's young and manipulatively caddish friend Eddie. When Anna and Thomas go abroad, they send Portia to the seaside to stay with Anna's former governess and Eddie follows, leading to a Weekend of Epic Disillusionment (and 400 pages of me going Yaaaaaaay!)

As titles go, The Death of the Heart is a little obvious and melodramatic for me, but I will forgive it, because Bowen kills all her hearts so beautifully. Somehow, Anna and Thomas are dead inside and sympathetically human, and I love it. Thomas can't care for his sister, but he can get really annoyed when someone interrupts him from a pleasant Saturday afternoon spent doodling cartoon cats
on his desk blotter. (YOU HATE THIS TOO, don't lie). Anna should be the most sympathetic to Portia's crush on Eddie, having gone through a similar love affair fifteen or so years earlier, and yet she sees it all and doesn't intervene. Basically, I can't with the parallels. I can't. I want to smoosh their cheeks together, I love them so much.

But mostly, there's Portia. Not going to lie, if I were an orphan in 1930s London, pretty sure she would be me. I would be lurking and silently observing and falling in love with funny dramatic cads all over the place, so, naturally, I was Team Portia, which only made her eventual hardening of heart all the more powerful. Ugh, if any character ever deserved a puppy, SHE IS IT.

I am only giving this book four stars, because toward the end I was so addicted and desperate to know how Portia would end up that I was like STOP USING WORDS, JUST SHOOT THE STORY INTO MY VEINS, and Bowen insisted on continuing to write forty-paragraph philosophical asides every three pages or so. They were great at the beginning, and this lady knows her way around a philosophical aside,but when we finally got to that downward plot slope, I just wanted the momentum and only the momentum. HOWEVER, I want to re-read this one day, and I'm pretty sure it will go up to a 5 when I am less impatient.

But anyway. Here are two reviewers that are smarter about positive reviews than I am. Jonathan Yardley, say hey! Charlotte Freeman, you too!(less)

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Apr 04, 2012 Kat rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics

This was my second time through this perfectly crafted novel, a psychological drama about Portia, a 16-year-old girl who, having lost both parents, comes to stay with her much older half-brother and his wife in the London of the mid-1930s. Portia's extreme innocence clashes with the highly sophisticated and artificial way of being that her hosts maintain. Though nothing externally dramatic takes place in this novel, it is never slow, and the characters are richly rendered. Most of them, admitted...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Nereia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: women-challenge-2013

La morte del cuore, romanzo scritto da Elizabeth Bowen nel 1938, è edito da Neri Pozza che ne ha pubblicato la ristampa ad Ottobre del 2012. Il libro si aggiudica l'etichetta di Perduti & Ritrovati perché, oltre ad essere sconosciuto ai più, è stato prima pubblicato da Le Tartarughe e abbandonato al suo triste destino di libro a cui non è stata dedicata attenzione. Si tratta della storia di Portia, figlia di un uomo al suo secondo matrimonio, che rimasta orfana si ritrova a dover vivere insi...more La morte del cuore, romanzo scritto da Elizabeth Bowen nel 1938, è edito da Neri Pozza che ne ha pubblicato la ristampa ad Ottobre del 2012. Il libro si aggiudica l'etichetta di Perduti & Ritrovati perché, oltre ad essere sconosciuto ai più, è stato prima pubblicato da Le Tartarughe e abbandonato al suo triste destino di libro a cui non è stata dedicata attenzione. Si tratta della storia di Portia, figlia di un uomo al suo secondo matrimonio, che rimasta orfana si ritrova a dover vivere insieme al fratellastro, Thomas, e a sua moglie, Anna. Sebbene, inizialmente, il lettore avrà l'impressione che quella sia la storia di Anna e Thomas, costretti a ospitare una persona poco gradita nella loro casa, passate le prime cento pagine, l'attenzione della Bowen si sposta per concentrarsi sulle vicende che riguardano Portia in prima persona.
All'inizio del romanzo odiavo Portia. Sul serio, un odio profondo e viscerale giustificato dalle sue azioni e dalla povertà dei suoi sentimenti.
Dannazione, cara, esprimiti! Arrabbiati, piangi, ridi, fai qualcosa! Invece no. Portia si adagia alle situazioni con una mancanza di carattere da far rabbrividire perfino i passanti. Cribbio, hai sedici anni, d'accordo, hai perso la mamma e il papà e d'accordo anche qui. Ma tutto ciò non giustifica la completa alessitimia (dicesi alessitimia l'incapacità di provare emozioni).
C'è da dire che la Bowen si serve del narratore onnisciente in maniera un po', passatemi il termine, "accademica". Sta lì e guarda tutti dall'alto, spesso descrivendo esclusivamente le azioni senza condirle di sentimento, passione. Poi, ad un certo punto, tutto cambia quando Portia si reca in vacanza a Waikiki. Lì ecco che, finalmente, i suoi sentimenti per Eddie (imparerete a odiare anche lui) si palesano e il lettore comincerà a provare una sorta di tenerezza per Portia, per la sua ingenuità, per la sua immaturità. In alcuni punti del romanzo sono stata salvata solo dalla consapevolezza di trovarmi in metropolitana rendendomi conto che, forse, la scelta di gettare il libro per terra, saltarci sopra con veemenza riempiendo Eddie di osceni turpiloqui, non era poi così saggia. Qualche parolaccia, però, mi è sfuggita comunque. Non so dare un voto preciso a questo libro perché è un romanzo freddo, distaccato, riflessivo.
Le descrizioni, che rasentano l'ossessività, appesantiscono il testo ma non la storia. Suvvia, facciamo un 3 e mezzo su 5.
Ad ogni modo, scritto e tradotto con immensa maestria. Chepeau.
(less)

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Jul 13, 2012 Laura rated it 2 of 5 stars

I really couldn't get into this book - it was just too slow paced for me. It is obviously influenced by Henry James and Edith Wharton, but that's not necessarily a good thing - it's taken some of the negative aspects of their work too. I didn't realize the description 'psychological fiction' meant 'head games between wars' - there's very little action here. Also, other than Portia (to a limited degree), the characters are very unsympathetic. I really couldn't like or care about anyone.

This might...more

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Mar 28, 2009 Callie rated it 4 of 5 stars

By the end I figured out that this book reminds me of Catcher in the Rye, since it is about the loss of innocence. You wonder how a sixteen year old could be that innocent, though, even in the 1930s. An orphan, Portia goes to live with Anna and Thomas (her half brother) who aren't very nice to her--actually, Anna can't bear to have her around, mainly because Portia's keeping a diary and since nothing really happens to her (Portia) she keeps it about the movements of Anna and Thomas and it makes...more

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Nov 14, 2012 emi Bevacqua rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: euro, family-dysfunction, fiction, classics

Elizabeth Bowen's The Death of the Heart, published in 1939, is the story of 16-year old Portia, who upon being orphaned, is sent to the home of her half-brother Thomas and his wife Anna. On the surface, Thomas is well-to-do and quite respected, as is his wife. Although he and Portia were both fathered by the same man, Thomas's good mother was the first wife in the proper stable London home; whereas Portia's mother was the mistress and eventual second wife, who raised her in common hotels all ov...more

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