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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
The Death of the Heart, a story of adolescent love and the betrayal of innocence, is perhaps Bowen's best-known book. When sixteen-year-old Portia, recently orphaned, arrives in London and falls for an attractive cad -- a seemingly carefree young man who is as much an outsider in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of 1930s drawing rooms as she is -- their collision threatens to shatter the carefully built illusions of everyone around them. 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 sharp sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations.
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.7. Seller Inventory # G0394421728I3N00
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Fair. No Jacket. Missing dust jacket; Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.7. Seller Inventory # G0394421728I5N01
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. Erstwhile remainders w/little red Random House stamp on text blocks, jacketless, in Very Good condition & sold together. THE DEATH OF THE HEART, 12th printing, May 1978, 418pp, clean & tight, appears unread. "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 he 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." [publisher copy] "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. THE COLLECTED STORIES OF ELIZABETH BOWEN, First American Edition 1981, Introduction by Angus Wilson, 784pp, slightly soiled spine & several ink spots on top edges of white boards, no interior markings, substantial Borzoi w/deckle edged pages. "This collection brings together seventy-nine magnificent stories written over the course of four decades. Vividly featuring scenes of bomb-scarred London during the Blitz, frustrated lovers, acutely observed children, and even vengeful ghosts, these stories reinforce Bowen's reputation as an artist whose finely chiseled narratives--rich in imagination, psychological insight, and craft--transcend their time and place." [publisher copy] "Quite simply one of the best short story writers who ever lived."--Newsweek. "Bowen's stories show the awesome capabilities of the English language and the surprise and mystery of the human soul."--Anne Tyler. "Bowen's stories are novels that have been split open like rocks and reveal the glitter of the naked crystals which have formed them."--V.S. Pritchett. "Richly reconfirms the extraordinary contribution Elizabeth Bowen has made to English letters."--Eudora Welty. Jacketless Knopf remainders w/brilliant corners & crisp edges; HEART has tight binding, STORIES binding is slightly sprung due to massive page count; both make a nice set. Seller Inventory # RUB2820
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. A novel. Eleventh printing. Fine in a very fine, price clipped dust jacket. Dust jacket design by George Salter.; 418 pages. Seller Inventory # 98820