I loved this novel. Beautifully written, the characters and the world they inhabit is so perfectly drawn, that the reader is instantly drawn into it. The novel is undramatic in many respects, until the end that is. Elizabeth Taylor has written the characters interactions with each other
in such a way that the tension builds slowly and perfectly, The people are very English, they have tea at the proper time, and go to London to have their hair done, and yet it is possible to understand them and their hopes and fears, as they are really just like anyone else. Most of the novel takes place in the large house that Kate once shared with her first husband, Alan. Now she is married to Dermot, who is ten years her junior and has no job, and resents his mother Edwina's interferrance from London in trying to find him one. There is Tom, Kate's grown up son, and her daughter Louisa home for the holidays from school, she is 16 and deveops a bit of thing for the local curate. Then there is Aunt Ethel who lives there with her cello, and her dog, and writes to her friend long letters about the various domestic dramas that ensue. Into the mix come Charles and Araminta - widower of Kate's best friend and his beautiful daughter - who live close by. ( )

really good. great minor characters ( )

Many have told me that I should read the books of Elizabeth Taylor - an author I'd not heard of until the publication of Nicola Beauman's recent biography The Other Elizabeth Taylor by the wonderful Persephone Books. I picked up this particular one for its striking cover photo, and was told by pal Helen, that it was about a woman who marries a much younger man - a toy boy! - well that sold it to me instantly.

Published in 1961, it follows one summer in the lives of a family living in the Thames Valley, with 'The View' of Windsor castle visible in the far distance. This is already prime commuter belt - every day the men go off to work on the train to their jobs in the city - well, everyone except Dermot that is. He is the young Irish thirty-something husband of forty-something well-off widow Kate. They live in some comfort with Kate's sixteen year old daughter Louisa and twenty-two year old son Tom, her Aunt Ethel, and looked after by cook Mrs Meacock. As the novel opens, Kate is on a duty visit to her new mother-in-law, Edwina, up in London for the day. Edwina is always trying to find a job for her youngest, who has never been able to settle at anything or anyone until he fell in love with Kate.

In the first half of the movel we find out what makes them all tick - and frankly, it's all about sex. Kate with her younger husband, Tom with his girlfriends, and Louisa's growing awareness and crush on the young curate in the village. Aunt Ethel watches all these mostly repressed emotions and assesses it in her letters to her friend Gertrude - "When the sex goes Kate will think him no bargain".

Then the Thorntons return from abroad. The Thorntons, Charles and Dorothea, were Kate and her first husband Alan's best friends, and Tom had a thing for Minty, their daughter. Charles' wife died and Kate is keen to make them feel at home again now they're back in England. There are bound to be problems - as three's a crowd - Charles and Kate are the same age, whereas Dermot is closer to the children in age and sometimes, outlook.

"They were walking in circles around each other, Kate thought - both Dermot and Charles. When she had introduced them, Dermot had shaken hands with an air of boyish respect, almost adding 'Sir' to his greeting, and Charles seemed to try and avoid looking at him or showing more than ordinary interest. Although he had not met him before, even as far away as Bahrain he had heard stories, and Kate, writing to tell him of her marriage, had done so in a defensive strain, as if an explanation were due and she could think of no very good one."

The story is mainly told from Kate's point of view, but we hear not only her voice, but her thoughts also - and the two are often opposite. In that terribly repressed middle-class way, everyone says one thing and means another. The author takes a scalpel to these relationships and dissects them with sensitivity and wit, bringing things to a climax with great skill. I can safely say this novel made an instant fan of me, and I wonder why I never discovered her before. ( )

Kate Heron is a middle-aged, comfortably well-off woman in a second marriage with Dermot, who is several years her junior. Her son Tom is a young adult, seemingly lacking in talent and maturity, but expected to take over his paternal grandfather's business. Her 16-year-old daughter Louisa attends a boarding school but, for most of this novel, she is at home on holiday and pining after the local curate. Dermot is, in short, a ninny, who is unable to hold down a job and so sponges off his wife and his mother. Although never explicitly stated, it appears Kate joined up with Dermot out of loneliness when she was suddenly widowed. They seem an odd couple, and most of the other characters in this book are generally wondering how long the marriage will last. Kate is also mourning the passing, several years ago, of her dear friend Dorothea. About halfway through the novel, Dorothea's husband and daughter return to the village after a long absence, unwittingly upsetting the order of relationships.

Elizabeth Taylor is quite skilled at portraying ordinary people, embodying some with amusing idiosyncracies (such as the aunt who is obsessed with sex, although she has no direct personal experience), while also putting her characters under a microscope to expose the tiny flaws that are often the source of their downfall. This is what I enjoy most about her writing. Unfortunately, the plot did not measure up to the characters, and in my view this book fell short of her other work (i.e.; A View of the Harbour, and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont). ( )

Kate Heron is a typically English woman but she has chosen an atypical path for herself after being left a wealthy widow after her husband’s death: she has remarried but to a much younger man. It is a marriage of love, for both, but it is not a marriage of minds or of interests. Dermot is a feckless and directionless man who cannot settle on anything to do for a career, which leaves him in the position of being a ‘kept man’. Until he met Kate, he hadn’t been able to settle in love either.

As the summer progresses, with the return of Kate’s late best friend’s husband and daughter, Araminta, the centre ceases to hold in her life and everything starts to slide away. Her daughter, Lou, has an impossible schwarm for Father Blizzard. Her son, Tom, is hopelessly in love with Araminta, a model-thin girl with a ravenous appetite. The intensity of these loves is beautifully handled by Taylor, as she captures exquisitely the torture of unrequited young love.

It is a very sensual novel, with that aspect of Kate and Dermot’s relationship being described in interesting counterpoint (and detail) through Aunt Ethel’s letters to her friend in Cornwall. But it is sensuality without friendship, genuine communication or comparable levels of maturity with regard to Kate and Dermot. In fact, none of the relationships or loves in the story are satisfactory in this way. Until the end, when the right people end up together and a sense of balance and rightness is restored.

“In a Summer Season” is a beautifully crafted story, written with compelling insight into the hearts and minds of different ages and personality types. There were some wonderful moments of description which had me smiling with pleasure (Aunt Ethel's delicacy about being a "parasite" by lugging her cello upstairs comes to mind). Recommended.