All the talk of The Women's Room is reminding me of my dear dad, who once - most surprisingly - read it, but forever after referred to this great pioneering feminist novel as 'The Ladies' Room'. Not quite what Marilyn had in mind, I don’t think.
Anyway, onwards….😬
2. A Game of Hide and Seek - Elizabeth Taylor
This is in fact a novel with many interesting things to say about the role of women in life, relationships and society. Harriet and Vesey have known each other from childhood, spending many summers together at the home of Vesey's relations, who are also friends of Harriet's mother. The two young people teeter on the verge of an agonised, never-quite-articulated relationship, stopped in its tracks when Vesey disappears up to Oxford, and when Harriet's left motherless, there seems no choice for her but marry the older man, Charles, who's been vaguely pursuing her.
The second part of the book resumes almost 20 years later. Harriet and Charles now have a clever, happy schoolgirl daughter, Betsy. Without warning, Vesey reappears and Harriet's youthful love for him surges back. The fallout from her feelings affects not just her and Charles but an increasingly involved Betsy as well.
This was Taylor's 5th novel and as ever it's beautifully written, in quite a formal style. There’s a large cast of supporting characters to relish - Taylor writes children especially well and there are several here - also Mrs Curzon the cleaning lady and Julia, Harriet's eventual mother-in-law, a preposterous ex-actress. My main puzzle is that Vesey was such an irritating character I found it hard to see why Harriet was so in thrall to him, but that is indeed the point of the book, I suppose - we bumble along, make mistakes, attach our affections to the wrong people and can’t always manage our feelings in the perfect way. A great read, though.