Marking Time - Hardcover

ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333565967 ISBN 13: 9780333565964

Publisher: MACMILLAN, 1991

Synopsis

(2nd in "The Cazalet Chronicle" series)Volume two of the Cazalet Chronicles turns to the Cazalet children. Sixteen-year-old Louise, Edward and Villy's daughter, moves out into the world, discovering at drama school a casualness towards language and sex that would shock her parents - as much as their secret lives would shock her. And Polly, now fourteen, finds that war cannot forestall the pangs of adolescence, while another fourteen-year-old, Clary, is the one hit hardest by the her father, Rupert, has been reported missing after Dunkirk. While the rest of the family gradually accepts that he must be dead, Clary clings to the belief that he is alive.

"Deeply romantic without ever straying into the maudlin or sentimental . . . a triumph of authentic nostalgia." (The Times of London)

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923 2014) was the author of fifteen highly acclaimed novels. The Cazalet Chronicles "The Light Years", "Marking Time", "Confusion", "Casting Off", and "All Change" have become established as modern classics and have been adapted for a major BBC television series and most recently for BBC Radio 4. In 2002 she was appointed commander to the Order of the British Empire.

From Kirkus Reviews

A perfect if inauspicious title for this second course of Howard's Cazalet Chronicles (begun with The Light Years, 1990), since this latest is all idling before something big happens--as the Cazalet writer-to-be, Clary, puts it, ``We need people to be in love with....We'll just have to wait.'' The waiting begins right after Chamberlain's ``peace with honor'' falls through and Hitler marches into Poland. At the Sussex manse of ``Brig'' Cazalet--now a blind old duffer shepherded around by his faithful spinster daughter, Rachel--the much extended Cazalet family gathers with their gas masks, not to mention orphaned babies (one of Rachel's charity), wounded soldiers, and London evacuees. The Brig's eldest son, Hugh, lamed during the Great War, stays at home to blunder along with the family timber firm and to coddle his wife, Sybil, who has incurable cancer; middle son, Edward, the womanizer, joins up, spending weekend leaves sexually abusing his beautifully budding daughter, Louise, while his wife, Villy, develops a crush on a conductor; and the last son, Rupert, goes missing in action right before his young wife, Zoe, has a baby. In addition, Howard focuses on the children of this crew, including: 17-year-old Louise, who attends acting school; Clary, Rupert's daughter by his late first wife, who nicely copes with her airheaded stepmother and fills her journal feverishly; and Polly, whose chief attribute is her goodness. By the end, Japan has drawn the US into the war; there's word of Rupert, possible romance for Clary, and as always, the Cazalets marching ever on. Comfortable, literate, but very slow lane. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: MACMILLAN
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0333565967
• ISBN 13: 9780333565964
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 416