Friends and Relations: A Novel

Elizabeth Bowen

Nov 2012 · University of Chicago Press

About this ebook

In his introduction to a collection of criticism on the Anglo-Irish author Elizabeth Bowen, Harold Bloom wrote, “What then has Bowen given us except nuance, bittersweet and intelligent? Much, much more.” Born in 1899, Bowen became part of the famous Bloomsbury scene, and her novels have a much-deserved place in the modernist canon. In recent years, however, her work has not been as widely read or written about, and as Bloom points out, her evocative and sometimes enigmatic prose requires careful parsing. Yet in addition to providing a fertile ground for criticism, Bowen’s novels are both wonderfully entertaining, with rich humor, deep insight, and a tragic sense of human relationships.

Friends and Relations follows the exploits of four wealthy families whose lives are changed forever by a torrid affair. The Studdart sisters each take a husband; for beautiful Laurel there is Edward Tilney, and for the introverted Janet there is Rodney Meggatt. But the marriages are complicated by changeable passions, and each character must navigate the conflict between familial piety and individual desire. With Bowen’s signature blend of tragedy and comedy, Friends and Relations is truly an investigation into the human heart, and the book is as beautiful, mysterious, and moving as its subject.

About the author

Elizabeth Bowen, distinguished Anglo-Irish novelist, was born in Dublin in 1899, traveled extensively, lived in London, and inherited the family estate-Bowen's Court, in County Cork. Her account of the house, Bowen's Court (1942), with a detailed fictionalized history of the family in Ireland through three centuries, has charm, warmth, and insight. Seven Winters is a fragment of autobiography published in England in 1942. The "Afterthoughts" of the original edition are critical essays in which she discusses and analyzes, among others, such literary figures as Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Katherine Mansfield, Anthony Trollope, and Eudora Welty. Bowen's stories, mostly about people of the British upper middle class, portray relationships that are never simple, except, perhaps, on the surface. Her concern with time and memory is a major theme. Beautifully and delicately written, her stories, with their oblique psychological revelations, are symbolic, subtle, and terrifying. A Time in Rome (1960) is her brilliant evocation of that city and its layered past. In 1948, Bowen was made a Commander of the British Empire. Bowen died in 1973.