The Long View

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Ora tutto quell'edificio franava come una massa d'argilla giù da una montagna, e la sua alta opinione mutò in una spaventosa, improvvisa indifferenza. Ci fu il silenzio completo e sinistro che sempre segue una valanga di quelle proporzioni." Cooper, Jonathan (23 April 1990). "Novelist Martin Amis Carries on a Family Tradition: Scathing Wit and Supreme Self-Confidence". People . Retrieved 15 June 2012. Finding a character's point of view is made more difficult because the author keeps inserting her own external view, as when a character is reminded that she should 'take tea (that horrible unnecessary meal designed to make unsatisfied women more unsatisfactory) with' another woman. The Light Years and Marking Time were serialised by Cinema Verity for BBC Television as The Cazalets in 2001. A BBC Radio 4 version in 45 episodes was also broadcast from 2012. [7] Antonia resiste , resiste fedele alla scelta compiuta, inamovibile nonostante sia intrisa bicchieri di whsky . resiste in un matrimonio che è coperto da cappe di silenzio come coperte a tensioni continue.

Forty-three-year-old Antonia Fleming is preparing a dinner party for eight at the house in Campden Hill Square she shares with her husband, Conrad. The occasion is the engagement of their son, Julian. Their other child, Deirdre, hates her father and resents her mother—a reality Conrad ponders, along with the disastrous state of Deirdre’s single life, as he leaves the bed of his current mistress. The trouble with human relations is that the damned ball is always rolling, or in the air, never peacefully in charge of one person. Self-centered men, everyone at their worst. There are amazing human interactions, but at times I got lost in the writing. I wanted more fire in Antonia, and had a hard time relating to her. If I didn't feel down about love before....

She passionately wanted to be regarded ‘for herself’ as women say, which means for some elusive attraction which they do not feel they possess. This tale is like a gossip columnist of the day sneering at all the pillars of society. Phrases like 'ghastly sterility' abound. I will not spend my evenings with you in an atmosphere of Freudian night nursery. I will not play down to that adolescent's Italian comic opera. Give me gout and a little more money, and a few more doors to the kitchen and we should have been complete".

The detail and rambling passages leave me wondering what the initial comment was about. There are many references that mean nothing to me. Since the setting is early to mid 1900's in London, I suppose that makes sense, but the endless lists left me searching for meaning in the run-on sentences. Constant references to cities, people, events, etc. that, had I took the time to look up, would have further impeded my ability to maintain the story flow. It is like reading a bulleted list in every other paragraph. There should have been subscripts to define the endless references. With all of the fluff, the actual purpose or thought to convey was buried in minutia. Elizabeth Jane Howard is undoubtedly an intelligent and talented writer. I recently read and enjoyed one of her other novels, 'After Julius'. I like 'The Long View' too. There is much to admire in it. It's a sensitive and insightful account of the breakdown of a marriage. But I don't think it's the classic that professional critics and other novelists, such as Hilary Mantel (who contributes an introduction to the Picador Classics edition that I have just read), seem to think it is. For me, it has one major failing: the author is sometimes unable to convert her clearly highly developed emotional intelligence into authentic, realistic dialogue. There are many occasions when characters - often the principal protagonists, Conrad and Antonia Fleming, but others too - simply think or speak in a way which seems forced and contrived. That is true of 'After Julius' too. But it was less pronounced there, to the extent that I did not feel that it overwhelmed the story. In 'The Long View', however, it's a distinct problem and marred my enjoyment of the book to a considerable extent. Here are some examples from Part Two of the novel. Three Miles Up and Other Strange Stories. 2003. ISBN 978-1-872621-75-3. (Contains the three stories included in We Are for the Dark, plus "Mr Wrong".)

She had acted in Stratford as a girl, and she would have liked what the day offered: the dark wintry river, the swans gliding by, and behind rain-streaked windows, new dramas in formation: human shadows, shuffling and whispering in the dimness, hoping – by varying and repeating their errors – to edge closer to getting it right. In Jane’s novels, the timid lose their scripts, the bold forget their lines, but a performance, somehow, is scrambled together; heads high, hearts sinking, her characters head out into the dazzle of circumstance. Every phrase is improvised and every breath a risk. The play concerns the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of love. Standing ovations await the brave.” Hilary Mantel on EJH