Bowen, Elizabeth – The Bell Bookshop

The heat of the day

Emma — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A haunting portrayal of love and betrayal in a London hollowed by war.

It is wartime London, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Stella discovers that her lover Robert is suspected of selling information to the enemy. Harrison, the British intelligence agent on his trail, wants to bargain, the price for his silence being Stella herself. Caught between two men and unsure who she can trust, the flimsy structures of Stella’s life begin to crumble.

‘Alive with the erotic tensions of the blackout, the Blitz and the heightened pleasures of sex in the proximity of death’ London Review of Books

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROY FOSTER

This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war – each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition

The selected stories of Elizabeth Bowen

Emma — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

‘Bowen’s stories are novels that have been split open like rocks and reveal the glitter of the naked crystals which have formed them’ Vogue

SELECTED AND WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY TESSA HADLEY

A girl shares her secret den. A couple stroll through a ruined city. A man walks into a ladies’ hat shop. A teacher dreams of killing her pupil.

Spanning the 1920s to the post-war years, this new selection brings Elizabeth Bowen’s finest short stories together for the first time. Elegant and subtle, they showcase Bowen’s ability to evoke ineffable emotions – grief, nostalgia, self-consciousness, dread – and combine remarkable psychological insight with vivid settings, from the countryside of Bowen’s native Ireland to the streets of her London home after the Blitz.

Encompassing characters from many walks of life and a vast array of moods, these are intricate journeys of domesticity and discovery, of the homely and uncanny, of the mind and body.

Time In Rome

Emma — Thu, 06 Mar 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Elizabeth Bowen’s account of a time spent in Rome is no ordinary guidebook but an evocation of a city – its history, its architecture and, above all, its atmosphere. She describes the famous classical sites, conjuring from the ruins visions of former inhabitants and their often bloody activities and speculates about the immense noise of ancient Rome, the problems caused by the Romans’ dining posture, and the Roman temperament. She evokes the city’s moods – by day, when it is characterised by golden sunlight, and at night, when the blaze of the moon ‘annihilates history’.

Vintage Classics Last September

Emma — Thu, 14 May 1998 00:00:00 +0000

Read Elizabeth Bowen’s accessible feminist take on the Irish aristocracy

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY VICTORIA GLENDINNING

The Irish troubles rage, but up at the ‘Big House’, tennis parties, dances and flirtations with the English officers continue, undisturbed by the ambushes, arrests and burning country beyond the gates. Faint vibrations of discord reach the young girl Lois, who is straining for her own freedom, and she will witness the troubles surge closer and reach their irrevocable, inevitable climax.

Vintage Classics Heat Of The Day

Emma — Tue, 05 May 1998 00:00:00 +0000

Vintage Classics House In Paris

Emma — Thu, 07 May 1998 00:00:00 +0000

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY A.S. BYATT

When eleven-year-old Henrietta arrives at the Fishers’ residence in Paris, little does she know what fascinating secrets the house itself contains. Henrietta finds that her visit coincides with that of Leopold, an intense child who has come to Paris to be introduced to the mother he has never known. In the course of a single day, the mystery surrounding Leopold, his parents, Henrietta’s agitated hostess and the dying matriarch in bed upstairs, come to light slowly and tantalisingly.