I’d better begin by saying what this collection of reviews is not. It is not literary criticism. It is simply a collection of book reviews written some fifty years ago, designed to tell its audience what they might enjoy reading - and as few people wish to spend much time being told how not to get to the Post Office, these reviews tend to be positive, though not, I hope, over-glazed with adulation.
The second point I would like to make is that I did read all of every book I reviewed - a detail, you might think, but one that should be mentioned since - in those days at least - many wretched authors had to endure ill-written pieces full of factual error and often undeserved spite. As Antony Powell remarked, ‘They go for you for not writing the book that you had no intention of writing in the first place.’
Reviewing has never been a well-paid job. People review largely for two reasons…they need the money, and they love the chance to explore and publish their opinion. Taken seriously, it is hard work. A good novel often has a serious effect upon the society from which it emerges. Take Darkness at Noon that is said to have stopped France embracing Communism after the Second World War - an extreme example of influence: but there are many more. Dickens - for example - wrote many novels expressing ignorance, incompetence, corruption, and hypocrisy. The industrial revolution bred a new class of rich and powerful people who had yet to learn humanity and respect. All empires have won on slavery, of one kind or another: the paradox of this nation striving to end the export of Africans to America while continuing to allow children (often sold by destitute parents) to be sold to go down mines or up chimneys. Novels, albeit obliquely, played a large part in informing and therefore civilizing society. Jane Austen was absolutely right with her sardonic reply “Only a novel, etc.”. When you look at my book, you will agree with this.
The novels reviewed here were written in the late fifties and early sixties and if they have a value it is that they provide a taste of how things were then. Social history is always accompanied by a streak of nostalgia and we all enjoy that.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Suffolk, 2013