A Wreath of Roses

"An old woman, who had seemed to be a mound of rusty clothes, stirred and lifted her head. Her hands lay on her lap as if they were separate from her body, two little sleeping animals."

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"The sun seemed to touch their bones, poured into them as if they were hollow like cups. Even the trees below in the valley looked dazed. Nothing moved, but the heat shimmering until the view was like a bad photograph."

Camilla, Frances and Liz have always spent summers together in a contented trio of perfect female friendship at the cottage owned by Frances, but things are different this summer, and Camilla feels more lonely and detached from the two other women than ever. Frances has always had her painting to sustain her, though she's also always show more gone out of her way to dispel any notion that she might be an eccentric artist and would rather be praised for her crab apple jelly than her painting. This year however, she is suffering more than ever from the effects of old age and her painting style has gone through a dramatic change, and not necessarily for the better. Liz, for her part, has found some kind of contentment in a marriage to a man she is not sure she loves, but in any case, her newborn baby occupies her completely and creates a distance between the two women, who've been used to sharing late night secrets and laughter together, to the annoyance of their old friend. Small wonder then, that Camilla should find herself irresistibly drawn to a shady but very handsome man she's met on the train to this fictional town of Abingford. We know from the beginning of the novel that something is bound to go terribly wrong, if the gruesome event Camilla and Richard have witnessed at the train station and which has acted as an icebreaker between them is to be taken as any kind of omen. Not very much happens, other than the normal activities one does on vacation; sitting in pubs, taking walks on the grassy hill-side, a picnic, a drive, picking wild flowers, another walk, in the driving rain this time. Yet so much happens in the interactions of Taylor's fascinating characters and the complexity of their own thoughts and feelings. There is that, and there is the gorgeous prose. The gorgeous prose which seems effortless, yet is so very evocative and for me, a wealth of imagery worthy of several paintigs. My third book by Elizabeth Taylor, and I look forward to many more. show less

There are three heroines in this short novel by Elizabeth Taylor and they correspond to the old folk image of "maiden, mother, crone." (I do prefer the more accurate "wise woman" for the latter.) Camilla is the virgin, settling uncomfortably into spinsterhood, dissatisfied with her career at a girls' school, becoming prickly and withdrawn. Liz, her school friend, is the new mother of a baby boy, and the 18 month bride of an Anglican clergyman. The wise woman is Frances, Liz's governess, a painter of gardens and light and melancholy pastel interiors. Camilla and Liz have spent every August since they left university with Frances at her flint cottage in Abingford. Only this year things are not the usual, happy holiday.

The relationship show more between the women has become unbalanced and they are unable to regain their easy, affection toward each other. Liz's center is now her child and since she has had no contact with infants she worries at every whimper and sniffle her lively baby has. Frances is dying and her last three paintings are not lovely, dreamy scenes, but angry, passionate images of chaos. Though she loves the girls, she is letting go. Camilla wants to experience passion before she sinks into early middle age.They are on different pages this summer. Death and mortality stalk the women. The novel begins with Camilla witnessing a suicide from a train platform on her way to the cottage. She becomes involved with a man she knows is a dangerous liar and possibly more. Liz is convinced her baby is dying. Frances knows she will not live to create another picture.

The three men in the novel balance the three women: Richard who seems to offer what Camilla wants; Arthur who spends more time writing letters to his wealthy female parishiners than he spends on his theology; and Morland who loves Frances' paintings and wants her to celebrate life to the end.

In a dark novel, there are flashes of Taylor's humour. Morning spit can cure everything from teething pain to chilbains. At an imaginary tea party Charlotte Bronte stood by the gate, Virginia was late, and Elizabeth Barrett hogged the sofa. And, as usual, the imagery is spot-on. Frances' cottage is surrounded by cactus plants, prickly as the relationships among the characters. Roses, alive and beautiful, are woven into a wreath and are nothing but dead flowers with thorns the next day.

Maiden, mother, wise woman. The three stages of a woman's life. Maybe. show less

“A fear of being left out inspired her, a feeling that life was enriching everyone but herself, that education had taken the place of experience and conversation the place of action.”

“in the centre of the earth, in the heart of life, in the core of even everyday things, is there not violence with flames wheeling, turmoil, pain, chaos?”

“Parting the leaves to look for treasure, love, adventure, she inadvertently disclosed evil and recoiled.”

Every summer school-teacher Camilla travels by train to stay for a month with her friend, Liz, at the flint cottage belonging to Frances Rutherford, Liz’s childhood governess. There had been hints that life was changing—that the pleasant routine was breaking up—the previous summer: show more Liz, then only recently married, was pregnant and plagued with morning sickness. This summer, even the journey to the village where Frances lives seems to bode ill. While waiting for a branch-line train, Camilla and a male passenger (Richard Elton) witness a man commit suicide by jumping from a footbridge. Although Elton’s clothing, movie-star good looks, and bearing suggest to Camilla that he is a man “whose existence could not touch hers . . . and counted its values in a different way”, after the suicide occurs, the two are drawn together. They get to talking when they’ve finally boarded the branch-line train.

It’s clear from the start that something is not quite right with Richard Elton. Even his name, Camilla muses, is the “sort of name that people don’t have . . . [that] a woman writer might choose for a nom-de-plume perhaps . . . or for the name of her hero”. Elton quickly assesses prim, buttoned-up Camilla, and he creates a persona that will appeal to her. He leads her to believe that he was a spy during the war, that he is working on a memoir about his wartime experiences, and that he is making a “sentimental journey” to the very town in which Camilla will stay with her friends. (The reader gets lots of hints, both subtle and not so subtle, that Elton doesn’t actually know the town at all, and that this is as good a place as any for a man on the run to stop.) Just when Elton is certain he’s got Camilla’s attention, he turns to reading a newspaper article about the grisly murder and dismemberment of a young woman. (His preoccupation with newspapers will only continue.) Elton will later leave the train in Abingford, just as Camilla does, and install himself in an upstairs room at the Griffin, a stale, dark pub.

Elizabeth Taylor shows a predilection for working with a small cast of characters. Her plots are quite minimal; the “action”, such as it is, is mostly psychological. The story of one character generally takes centre stage, but the narratives of the others are still well developed. In this novel, Camilla’s ill-advised involvement with the psychopathic Richard Elton is the major focus, but her friends’ stories and dilemmas are carefully depicted, too. They are of interest in their own right, but they also enhance and amplify aspects of Camilla’s experience. Take the elderly Frances: the former governess believes she wasted her life teaching foolish young girls when she ought to have dedicated herself to art. Frances is now finding a new way with her painting, shaking off the prettiness and sentimentality that characterized her earlier work in favour of something more raw and true. She is forthright and gruff with her young friends, heaping scorn on novel-reading and sharply correcting any of their tendencies to pretension and self-delusion. To Camilla, who likes to cultivate an image of herself as fine and sensitive, for example, Frances observes: “You try to enlarge yourself by everything that happens, even other people’s misfortunes. As if you had special feelings.” Frances’s old-maid status is a kind of caution to Camilla, an image of what she could become.

Liz’s personality and story provide a counterpoint to Camilla’s. Impulsive, emotional, and willing to engage with others, Liz has what Camilla lacks: spontaneity, a marriage, and a child. Even so, she, too, struggles with the realities of her situation.

Those characters in the novel who are aware that Camilla is associating with the disturbed Richard Elton, a man capable of causing real harm to a woman, attempt to warn her against him. Elton’s emptiness, falseness, and manipulation are actually evident to Camilla, but her discernment is always threatened by her consuming need to be loved and desired by him—by some man. Camilla’s psychological conflicts create most of the tension in this novel.

A Wreathe of Roses is a darkly compelling novel that explores a number of themes: loneliness, art, marriage, old age, friendship, the psychological impact of war, psychopathology, and the even larger question of the place of humans in the universe. The novel is mostly expertly realized. However, I think Frances is portrayed in an occasionally clunky manner. From time to time, she holds forth on philosophical matters in an inauthentic and even stagey way, appearing to be too much the author’s mouthpiece. Morland Beddoes, a middle-aged film director and great admirer of Frances’s paintings, is also a somewhat problematic character. He comes on the scene rather late, and I found his too-quick integration into the group and his rapid, almost preternatural assessment of Richard Elton’s capacity to do harm a bit hard to credit. (Beddoes is certainly one of Taylor’s “types”: the unmarried older man, a spectator and a listener, in whom women readily confide.) Having said all this, I still think A Wreath of Roses is a rich, dark gem of a novel, one well worth reading—or re-reading, as was the case for me. I found that I actually appreciated the novel much more the second time. show less

Elizabeth Taylor writes such exquisite prose, within a few short pages I can be whisked away to a different time and place. Take, for example, the opening of A Wreath of Roses. A woman arrives at a train station on a hot summer day. She and another passenger wait for the next train. The station is quiet; a chair scrapes the floor, and traffic can be heard outside the station. It was all so leisurely, and then:
This happening broke the afternoon in two. The feeling of eternity had vanished. What had been timeless and silent became chaotic and disorganised, with feet running along the echoing boards, voices staccato, and the afternoon darkening with the vultures of disaster, who felt the presence of death and arrived from the village to show more savour it and to explain the happening to one another. (p. 3)

Isn't that ominous? Aren't you overcome by a sense of foreboding? And you want to know what the "happening" was, don't you?

You'll have to read it to find out, but suffice to say the "happening" causes Camilla and Richard, the people waiting for the train, to meet. Camilla is en route to a holiday with her long-time friend Liz and Liz's friend and former governess, Frances. Richard is ... well, he's rather vague about his purpose. But he's good-looking and a smooth talker, and Camilla is surprised to find herself attracted to him. Camilla is also very conflicted about her friendship with Liz, which has changed since Liz married and had a baby.
What had seemed plenty in other years, now appeared threadbare. She felt a restlessness, like milk beginning to sway up to the boil, a trembling excitement, sometimes pleasurable as it had been in the Griffin last night; but often painful, as it was when she held Liz's baby or watched Liz with him. She knew that what had charmed her in other summers could not charm her now; and felt that, because of this, the holiday must be different and had been different from the beginning, different at the railway station, at her arrival, different with Liz. The long series of these summer holidays from girlhood onwards was suddenly broken. (p. 39)

Through Richard, Camilla can escape the painful emotions that swell while she's with Liz and Frances. But he preys on Camilla's insecurity and jealousy, and weaves an elaborate tale about his past to draw her closer. Richard is vaguely sinister, but it takes the reader and Camilla quite a while to discover the truth. Meanwhile, Liz and Frances experience drama of their own: Liz is uncertain about her marriage; Frances anticipates the arrival of a man she has corresponded with for years, but never met.

Taylor's characterizations are as finely drawn as the scenes they inhabit. Her keen powers of observation enabled her to squirrel away a myriad of details that would later be embodied in her characters. In A Wreath of Roses, Liz and Camilla represent two very different kinds of women. Or, as Nicola Beauman suggested in her biography The Other Elizabeth Taylor, perhaps they represent two sides of Taylor herself: a wife and mother, and an independent but vulnerable woman. The plot is almost secondary, serving as a way to explore each woman's emotions and world view. And yet, there's just enough plot to hold the reader's interest and make them care about these women and their search for happiness and fulfillment. show less

When I began this novel, I thought it might be a sort of woman’s period piece, something akin to [b:The Enchanted April|3077|The Enchanted April|Elizabeth von Arnim|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1162239197l/3077._SY75_.jpg|387804]. It was far from that. Three friends share a summer holiday together, as they have often done before, but this is a unique summer for them, a summer of change. Elizabeth is a new mother, Frances is her former governess, seeking a way to embrace her almost sudden aging, and Camilla is Elizabeth’s best friend, who is afraid of becoming a spinster.

”We go on for years at a jog-trot,’ Frances said, ‘and then suddenly we are beset with doubts, the landscape darkens, show more we feel lost and alone, conscious all at once that we must grope our way forward for we cannot retrace our footsteps.”

The landscape does, indeed, darken and each of the main characters seems lost, alone and groping. All of their roles have changed and none of them seems comfortable in her own skin. And, there are men, who serve to complicate an already tense and emotional situation.

for once she thought without disgust of the great rumpled beds in Frances’ paintings which she had always looked at with fastidious, cold appraisal, but now longed for with the thought inherent in squeamish people that the sordid must always be truer to life than the agreeable.

Elizabeth Taylor robs these women of their innocence. They must wake up to the world, see truth, and know life for what it is and for what it can never be. show less

My second Taylor novel will definitely not be my last. She seems to be a master at delineating loneliness in all its forms and this novel, written a few years after WWII, demonstrates the dark lonely days where the characters showed the after lasting effects of that war time period.

Three women, Camilla, Frances and Liz, have always spent the month of August on holiday together and this year is no different. What is different, are the lives of the women. Liz has married a minister and is now a new mother. Camilla, disappointed at what she views as her friend’s abandonment, counters by taking up with a man she met while witnessing a ghastly event at a train platform. Frances, for her part, is concentrating on her painting, which she show more feels is coming to an end, as the results of aging are becoming more and more apparent.

Add to this group three very different men, including Liz’s husband, Arthur, who just shows up one day, throwing off the previous balance of personalities. Morland Beddoes is an admirer of Frances’ paintings, many of which he’s purchased. And then there’s Camilla’s acquaintance Richard, a truly frightening character.

The interactions and thoughts of these six people provide the impetus for Taylor’s narrative. It’s the little things, that occupy their days and nights, that prove to be so very interesting. And the author provides some lovely prose along the way. In this scene, between Liz and Camilla delineates the problems the two face now:

”They would not exchange glances. They were lost to one another. A no man’s land lay between them now, a terrain of unshared experience. The long years of intimacy, the letters spilling over untidily from page to page, the perfect matching of mood and humour, the exactly followed translations from deep sincerity to mockery or innuendo, now buckled up and came to a standstill. Only embarrassment stirred them.” (Page 112)

I found the prose would sneak up on me deceptively until I would think,”Wait…what was that again?” And I would reread. At the same time, Taylor manages to keep up a steadily increasing tempo leading up to the last few shocking paragraphs. Very much recommended. show less

There are some novels that you want to start read again as soon as you’ve finished it. To appreciate the finer details, unravel sub-text, and simply to admire. ‘A Wreath of Roses’ by Elizabeth Taylor had that effect on me.
It is described in reviews as ‘her darkest novel’. What fascinated me was the inter-play between the three key female characters, how they see each other, and themselves, how they behave individually and together. Multiple contradictions complicated by self-delusions and self-awareness. I don’t mean to seem cryptic. The story is simple, as is often the way with Taylor.
In that period after the Second World war when life begins to look normal, the undercurrents of the war experience are everywhere. Camilla show more and Liz are staying with Frances, Liz’s former governess, for their annual summer holiday. It is a habit forged by years with happy memories of podding peas and sharing stories. Except this year is different. Liz is now married and has brought her baby, Harry. Frances, an artist, is now painting dark tortured pictures rather than feminine florals and portraits. And Camilla has a shocking experience on her journey to stay with Frances; she witnesses a suicide at a train station that makes her melancholy, lonely and inadequate. She looks at herself in the dressing table mirror, ‘Her flesh was golden as an apricot; her hair, in contrast, looked tarnished and harshly bright.’
Taylor inserts three male characters as wedges into the cosiness of the three women. Camilla resents Arthur, Liz’s husband, for taking her friend away. Richard Elton, who with Camilla is there when the suicide happens, is staying at a pub in the village. Camilla feels sorry for him and at the same time attracted to him and will not listen to Liz’s instinctive uneasiness about him. Morland Beddoes is a collector of Frances’ work, he arrives in the village and stays at the same pub as Elton; he too feels uneasy about the man’s motivations. A friendly sort who finds himself the recipient of peoples’ woes, ‘Morland Beddoes was not in the last self-infatuated. He loved himself only as much as self-respect required, and the reason why he saw himself so clearly was that he looked not often, but suddenly, so catching himself unawares.’
This is a dark novel, but not in today’s meaning of psychological thriller. It is a study of ageing, friendship, the power of sexual tension, and it is sublimely written.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/ show less