The Long View

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The Long View by Elizabeth Jane Howard is a brilliantly written but ultimately depressing story of a marriage. When we meet the Flemings they are ”celebrating” the engagement of their son who is entering a marriage that looks like it will replicate the disaster that is his parents’. After reading this story of Conrad, an interesting but selfish, difficult, and unlikable man, and his wife, Antonia, who searches for his approval over what feels like a lifetime, anyone might pause before getting married. Elizabeth Jane Howard - obituary". The Telegraph. 2 January 2014. ISSN 0307-1235 . Retrieved 17 February 2018. Cooper, Artemis ‘’Elizabeth Jane Howard: A Dangerous Innocence’’, London: John Murray (2016), p.260. Howard's father was Major David Liddon Howard MC (1896–1958), a timber merchant who followed the work of his own father, Alexander Liddon Howard (1863-1946). [ citation needed] Her mother was Katharine Margaret ('Kit') Somervell (1895–1975), a dancer with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and daughter of composer Sir Arthur Somervell. [2] [3] (Howard's brother, Colin, lived with her and her third husband, Kingsley Amis, for 17 years.) [4] Mostly educated at home, Howard briefly attended Francis Holland School before attending domestic-science college at Ebury Street and secretarial college in central London. [3] Career [ edit ] The detail and rambling passages leave me wondering what the initial comment was about. There are many references that mean nothing to me. Since the setting is early to mid 1900's in London, I suppose that makes sense, but the endless lists left me searching for meaning in the run-on sentences. Constant references to cities, people, events, etc. that, had I took the time to look up, would have further impeded my ability to maintain the story flow. It is like reading a bulleted list in every other paragraph. There should have been subscripts to define the endless references. With all of the fluff, the actual purpose or thought to convey was buried in minutia.

No woman would like being told what she was, or would have been. They like the future—the future and the present.” Howard, who died at 90 in 2014, became far from innocent, marrying three times and having a string of lovers, including her first husband’s brother, Arthur Koestler, Ken Tynan, Laurie Lee, Cyril Connolly, and Cecil Day-Lewis. Perhaps all those lovers were the result of a sort of innocence. Ora tutto quell'edificio franava come una massa d'argilla giù da una montagna, e la sua alta opinione mutò in una spaventosa, improvvisa indifferenza. Ci fu il silenzio completo e sinistro che sempre segue una valanga di quelle proporzioni."

a b c Wilson, Frances (30 December 2012). "Elizabeth Jane Howard: interview". The Telegraph . Retrieved 18 April 2014. She was a nice, ignorant, unimaginative girl, designed perfectly to reproduce herself; and regarding her, Mr Fleming, found it difficult to believe in The Origin of the Species You should be more discriminating in the flattery you require. Or if that is beyond you, more selective as to time". In the night she woke, and all the time of her life seemed concentrated on the moment of waking, and all the meaning of her existence on her being deeply, irrevocably, in love.

Living, he always maintained, consisted of no fundamentals, outlines, basic truths, or principles, even for one person, let alone society, but simply a vast quantity of detail, endlessly variable and utterly unrelated. Howard paints a portrait of life (and marriage) in mid-20th century London. Her depiction of the society in which the Flemings live and the incisive examination of their marriage can be amusing. As written by Howard, it seems to be a time when a man marries under the illusion that he can take the raw material that he perceives as his wife and shape her into something pleasing to him. Antonia’s willingness to accept this situation and her continual striving for Conrad’s love also seems to belong to another time. But the sadness of a world in which love seems impossible and marriage at best a waste of people’s lives and at worst the opportunity for people to destroy someone (or themselves), becomes increasingly painful.Finding a character's point of view is made more difficult because the author keeps inserting her own external view, as when a character is reminded that she should 'take tea (that horrible unnecessary meal designed to make unsatisfied women more unsatisfactory) with' another woman.

The most mysterious, intricate point about women is that they require somebody else to teach them to live in their own body. Without that, they are lost, because they never discovered.The trouble with human relations is that the damned ball is always rolling, or in the air, never peacefully in charge of one person. I debated whether to give this 3 or 4 stars ⭐️ because as ever EJH’s writing is wonderful , but I decided on 3 because I just found it so depressing ! First published in 1956 it’s a story of a break down of a marriage on reverse , it wasn’t This I found depressing even though Conrad Fleming was a complete chauvinistic pig! It was the way older man so readily and easily prayed on young women and how young women weren’t taken seriously by either sexes of the older generation. Now after reading her memoir slipstream I think 🤔 mr & Mrs Fleming were based on her own parents, apart from Mrs Fleming being less Frigid as her real mother as the fling with Thompson in mariselle , France was some of the best writing. Ejh was abused by her own father and some of Conrad’s personality traits are copied from him (in my opinion) apart from ejhs own father loved women and was a serial charmer . Where as Conrad Fleming treats all women and Non ci sono paragoni tra i due, ma voglio dire che l'ho letto con una tale partecipazione che non so dire se sia un bel libro davvero.