The Long View

To me this is one of the best novels of the mid twentieth century and I have no idea why it is not now in print. The plot is an intricate, absorbing story of the beginning and long dissolution of a marriage. The characters haunt you because their story never quite resolves. The structure of starting 'in the present' and moving back in time creates its own suspense, as each 'older' episode illuminates the characters and their situations, and increases the sense of sorrow. But although things become clearer, they never become clear. The husband is an impossible man, Conrad Fleming, who is initially repellent, then devilishly manipulative, then sympathetic, then a mystery, but he is a strong and compelling character. He is one of the fine sadists that are stock in English literature, often written by a woman. To mystify, evade, patronize and shape their chosen partner is their sex play. The central character, Conrad's wife, Antonia. is equally mysterious, a strong woman and yet a masochist. This book touches on solitude, and most on how other people stay unknowable, even in 'the long view'.

Absorbing picture of a marriage

Eloquent account of a very young woman who runs from a damaging family and first affair to a husband who wishes to form her. This 1954 novel is beautifully written as is everything by EJ Howard.

I loved all EJH books except this one - Didn't finish and threw it away!

From the start where we're told of a wife 'sinking to the occasion' of organising a house party, where people would consume 'glazed dazed little pieces of food', we realise that this is not going to be a story about a story but about the author's writing style. We meet several extremely boring, snobby and self obsessed people in a 1950's London suburb. A wife who knows that she is passed over for a succession of mistresses and flings elicits no sympathy for having no backbone. A younger man in Edwardian fashion later announces to her that her daughter, his latest fling, or one of them, is pregnant and he doesn't wish to marry her.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.This tale is like a gossip columnist of the day sneering at all the pillars of society. Phrases like 'ghastly sterility' abound.Then we go back to 1942, when gas masks are a fact of life, and I found this more interesting with descriptive passages telling us of the smell of wartime Euston Station in the dark. The same characters are having a tough time of it but are still self centred and we wonder how their struggle for normality at this time has led to the rigid boredom we saw in the 1950 account. In both time periods everyone drinks astonishing amounts while wives pander to their husbands' whims to the degree of not saying anything they might not like to hear.Then we return still further, to the 1930s. People still dress for dinner and don't understand one another. Alcohol still lubricates society. A woman stares into her empty glass as she decides that she could never be an artist, the glass symbolising an empty dream. She is told 'anyway, you'll marry and have children', although there were some actual careers open to women at this time. The last part of the story occurs in 1926.We do not meet anyone who is not middle class, as far as I can tell, though there is vague mention of a splendid housekeeper from time to time or an unhelpful porter at the station. If you think this slow story of a backwards look at a marriage which is destined to fail, but which may never have been very much in the first place, will interest you, be my guest. It's like a Lord Peter Wimsey tale without anything so interesting as a murder. The author was born in 1923 and has just put her memories on paper in her own way. I'm sorry that the characters didn't seem to lead a very lively or useful life.I downloaded a copy from Net Galley for an unbiased review.

Where did Howard find these insufferable men? Not one decent one in sight. I found the early part the least interesting because why do we need to know about Antonia's children and their relationships when they don't appear through the next three hundred pages of back story? The book finally makes sense in part 4, but it's a heavy long trudge to get there. Dialogue is abysmal. Do men and women talk like that? And though they lived through the Second World War there's no sense of it. It's not even mentioned. I might try another Howard book but I'll read the reviews first.

This is not a story; it is an attempt to use as many adjectives in one book as possible. Many of the descriptions are wonderful, but then they just keep going. I have loved this author's novels but not this one.

This book has layer upon layer of emotion, reams of emotion! Sometimes too much, given how bleak things often are, but it is very well done and interesting despite its off-putting view of marriage. The fact that it is told in reverse helps me understand how the relationships became that way, but also means that I know it inevitably gets worse in the future (since I've read that part already).I received a free electronic copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Where did Howard find these insufferable men? Not one decent one in sight. I found the early part the least interesting because why do we need to know about Antonia's children and their relationships when they don't appear through the next three hundred pages of back story? The book finally makes sense in part 4, but it's a heavy long trudge to get there. Dialogue is abysmal. Do men and women talk like that? And though they lived through the Second World War there's no sense of it. It's not even mentioned. I might try another Howard book but I'll read the reviews first.

EJH is one of my favourite writers but I can't get on with this novel. It has an interesting framework, setting out a situation then going backwards in time to explain how it developed. The problem for me was that the most interesting characters appeared only in the first section, and I never heard what happened to them. The rest of the book is given over to describing is the most exhausting detail the heroine's unfortunate love affairs, with endless discussions about 'what women want', amidst a series of gourmet meals and incessant drinking which can only make me imagine the protagonists as huge and red-faced, whereas they are mostly uncommonly attractive... I longed for one of the characters to get a job or develop an interest in world affairs, but they seemed utterly self-obsessed. Disappointing.

The back cover blurb describes this as ‘heart-rending’ and I have to agree. It’s the story of a bad marriage told backwards in time, from its loveless continuance in 1950 to its understandable but no-for-God’s-sake-don’t-do-it beginning in 1926. A coming-of-age tragedy and an uncomfortable portrayal of how men and women’s different approaches to love and sex could operate to blight a woman’s becoming in those horrifically unequal times. It has me thinking of my mother, whose becoming was similarly, if less dramatically, blighted. It’s not a perfect book – overwritten, and the sense and punctuation are sometimes hard to decode – but, judging by this one, Elizabeth Jane Howard deserves to be at least as well known as Kingsley and Martin Amis, her husband and stepson, are.

This 20th century classic shifts focus backwards through the decades of one woman's life, gradually unfolding a history of relationships which moulded her life into one that she would never have imagined she would chose. The telling is subtle and engaging, the characters believable despite their extreme personalities.Different episodes speak to each other both forward and backwards in time, allowing us to see the traps - and they are mostly traps - and the triumphs of our central character.Overall this is a study of how a woman can become subsumed under the expectations of a husband who seeks to designate who she is. I finished the book itching to turn back to the beginning and remind myself of the future details that at first seemed unimportant.Highly recommended.

Although I have enjoyed Catherine Howard novels before, I found this one rather tiresome. I did not like the way it was written, going back in time, instead as more frequently found, going forwards.Also the story did not seem to flow.The introduction by Hilary Mantell was in itself tedious and I wondered if I would ever get to the end of it.I doubt I would recommend it as a good bedtime read.