In a Summer Season

Not to be confused with the actress. I’d never read her before, but she is often mentioned with one of my favorites, Barbara Pym. Kingsley Amis and Hilary Mantel are very keen on her. So I picked this one up at my used bookstore a few months ago and pulled it down yesterday when I noticed that it was the anniversary of her birth, in 1912.

The blurb on my Virago edition: “Kate Heron is a wealthy, charming widow who marries, much to the disapproval of friends and neighbors, a man ten years her junior: the attractive, feckless Dermot. Then comes the return of Kate’s old friend Charles—intelligent, kind and now widowed—with his beautiful young daughter. Kate watches happily as their two families are drawn together, finding show more Charles’s presence reassuringly familiar, but slowly she becomes aware of subtle undercurrents that begin to disturb the calm surface of their friendship. Before long, even she cannot ignore the gathering storm …”

Well, seeing as how I am myself someone’s attractive, feckless Dermot, I had to see how it turned out. (Spoiler: Not well for Dermot.) It is very good. I swallowed it whole in two sittings, and will seek out the rest of her stuff. show less

I’ve now read three of Taylor’s novels and all her short stories and I’m ready to agree with the back-cover blurb from Phillip Hensher that she is “one of the hidden treasures of the English novel.” She has an exquisite facility for having her characters' thoughts run in counterpoint to their dialogue; her stories are like helices, the inner world and the outer world intertwining and equally vivid but seldom aligning.

This one is something I especially love: a seasonal story, a sort of Shakespearean chamber piece in which love acts differently on diverse lovers. Kate is almost forty and has recently lost her husband and her best friend. She’s remarried, to an amiable loafer ten years her junior, and lives with him and her show more adult-sized son and daughter and a spinster sister of her ex-husband. Then the husband and intoxicatingly beautiful daughter of her dead friend come back from abroad and over the course of a hot summer everything becomes subtly clouded and unclear.

Taylor captures the subtlest of changes in prose that is precise, observant, and pure pleasure to read. Every character, from the lackaday curate whom Kate’s daughter loves unrequitedly, to the cook who spends her spare time compiling an “anthology” and dreams of Bermuda, to Kate’s bluff industrialist ex-father in law, has an inner world to which we’re given access. Reading Elizabeth Taylor feels like a special privilege. show less

Set in 1950s England, Taylor’s novel revolves around Kate Heron, a well-to-do widow in her early forties who has quickly remarried after the death of her children’s father. Her new husband, Dermot, is ten years her junior. He’s a ne’er-do-well who’s managed to coast through life on looks and charm. Edwina, his mother, has swept in periodically to rescue him financially. Now he’s got Kate to keep him . . . though he finds it humiliating to ask her for money. Dermot’s charisma is wearing thin, while his phoney Irish brogue is just wearing. He’s drifted along purposelessly, never settling down to any sort of gainful employment. His latest scheme is growing mushrooms in a shed full of manure on Kate’s property. Yes, Taylor show more retains her sense of humour in depicting his character.

Kate and Dermot live with Kate’s 22-year-old, restless son, Tom—a bit of a Dermot himself—who’s employed by his irascible self-made grandfather at the factory business the old man spent his life building. There’s also Kate’s 16-year-old daughter Louisa (“Lou”) who’s home for school holidays; Ethel, an elderly spinster aunt, former teacher, and hanger-on; and their cook, Mrs. Meacock, an avid scrapbooker. They all live a comfortable life in a Thames Valley London-commuter-belt village. The ease of their existence is courtesy of Kate’s deceased husband, Alan, who appears to have been a successful businessman. If anyone still grieves Alan, it’s not in evidence. (It’s unclear how long ago he actually died or from what.)

There’s lots of speculation as to why Kate married Dermot—and plenty of community disapproval. Her mothering role now mostly ended, she likely felt empty and at loose ends, conjectures the young curate, Father Blizzard. It’s due to sex, writes Aunt Ethel to her old suffragette friend, Gertrude. Ethel gives the marriage five years, by which time the “physical side” will have certainly subsided. No, it’s all down to jealousy, Louisa opines to the curate: Tom had been off having fun with one girlfriend after another, paying little attention to Kate, so she went for a combo boyfriend/son figure who’d take her out and about and make her feel young again. Taylor leaves no doubt in the reader’s mind that Dermot satisfies Kate’s womanly desires, perhaps in a way her first husband did not. Having married her, Dermot’s given her a boost—but also made her anxious about her age. The grey hairs coming in are worrisome.

This being Taylor, In a Summer Season is an ensemble piece: the reader is privy to the stories, small challenges, and mundane miseries of a supporting cast of characters. Louisa has found religion via her infatuation with the young Anglican clergyman who’s too high-church for most in the village and plans to leave—to join the Catholics, heaven forbid! Tom falls for Araminta (“Minty”), the pretty flibbertigibbet daughter of Charles and Dorothea Thornton, his parents’ old friends. (Dorothea died around the same time as Alan, and her bereaved husband and daughter who’d left the Thames Valley to go abroad for a time have now returned.) Aunt Ethel, spends her days sending written reports to her friend down in Cornwall on the petty drama of Kate and Dermot’s relationship. When not preparing her less-than-savoury American-inspired meals, Mrs. Meacock dreams of overseas adventures and culinary responsibilities elsewhere.

While Taylor’s writing is reliably fluent, this novel is, on the whole, a rather bland one, very light on incident. Kate is a dull and occasionally exasperatingly stupid woman; unsympathetic Dermot the drifter’s plight is less than compelling; Tom and Minty’s love neither convinces nor interests. I found Lou and Ethel mildly engaging, but not enough to actually save the book. I really didn’t care what happened to any of these people. This is not a good thing in a character-driven novel.

The significant event upon which the novel turns is Charles and Minty’s coming back to the village . Mature, gentlemanly, kind Charles is, of course, a stark contrast to Dermot. His ditzy daughter in her ridiculous garments is training to be a model. She becomes Tom’s obsession. A “tragedy”—can one even call it that when none of these characters evokes much sympathy or even interest?—occurs in the eleventh hour, hastily clearing out inconvenient characters so that all may resolve tidily.

A few years ago, I took part in a reading group that worked its way through Taylor’s novels. While I admire the author’s perceptive, sometimes sardonic writing and do like two or three of her novels, reading several in a row was too much of a muchness. I left the group before reading In a Summer Season. The long break from Taylor allowed me to finally take on the only novel of hers I hadn’t read. Unfortunately, I can’t summon up much enthusiasm for it. show less

(04 Jan 1998, book stall in Greenwich Market)

An original green covered Virago book, although the cover doesn’t really fit the subject matter. I didn’t really take to this book at first. It ticks all the Taylor boxes – slightly wonky marriage of misfits, suburban, middle class concerns, interfering mother in law, odd relatives … but the central character, Kate, didn’t really seem to come alive for me too much. Then suddenly, half way through, it “took” and I loved it from then on. The teenage characters are beautifully done, as they so often are. In particular, Louisa, with her odd collections, styes and love for the curate, is a great character, thrown into relief by her relationship with Aunt Ethel, a kind of aunt that show more doesn’t seem to exist any more, living in the family home and taking such pains to be unobtrusive that she becomes yet more intrusive. Add to the mix Mrs Meacock, the housekeeper, with her American puddings and wearing task of compiling a book, and son, Tom, nose to the grindstone in his grandfather’s office, and all you need is the return of next door’s Charles and his beguiling daughter to throw everything topsy-turvy.

This book is more full of sex and death than you’d perhaps expect an Elizabeth Taylor novel to be, from the outset, when we meet widowed Kate and her younger, very attractive husband, Dermot. It’s an interesting book, very Taylorian indeed, with all her hallmarks, including sudden events told dispassionately and the usual milieu … interestingly, I was never that keen on the mid-period Iris Murdoch novel “An Unofficial Rose”, which has the same features of being an uber-Murdochian novel. Not sure what that says about me, though! show less

Elizabeth Taylor is one of the most deceptively quiet writers I have ever encountered. You read her books with a sense that you are just peeking in on someone’s life. There is nothing major going on, much of the book is spent eavesdropping over the serving of tea or the setting of dinner placements, but there is a kind of electricity that hovers over everything, a testament that a storm is brewing somewhere and someone should be fastening down any loose items that might blow away.

I want to say that Taylor expends all her energies on character development, but that would imply that there is not a plot, and when you look back from the last pages, you know there always was more action going on than your conscious mind acknowledged. The show more meat is there, though, in the intricate characters, their subtle imperfections, their silent struggles, their mysterious undercurrents.

There are some very serious topics being explored in these everyday lives. Amid the teacups, we are often treated to the inner souls of these people and their struggle to find meaning in lives that can appear to be too idle.

‘We’re all of us just passing time,’ she thought, feeling irritated by the sound. A lack of purpose was an imperfection Dermot may have introduced. It seemed to her that it was worse for herself, without religion, to be squandering her life, expecting no other and chilled by the passage of time.

When we come into this novel, we are introduced to an upper middle class English family. Kate Heron is a widow, remarried to a younger man, Dermot, who is unemployed and somewhat insecure. Living with them are her children by the first marriage, twenty-two year old Tom, who struggles to please his grandfather, who has him in training to take over the family business; sixteen year old Louisa, who is suffering from her first “love” with the local curate; Kate’s aunt Ethel, who spends most of her time prying into the affairs of the others; and the cook/housekeeper, Mrs. Meacock, who dreams of traveling abroad and writing a book of inspirational sayings. Into this motley crew come the Thorntons, Charles and Araminta, the husband and daughter of Kate’s deceased best friend. These two extra personalities are what serve as the catalyst for all the carefully repressed anxieties to flame in the sweltering summer heat.

What goes on between these individuals is serious, without doubt. Not all of the novel is serious, however, for we have been gifted the marvelous Aunt Ethel, who made me laugh more than once. I had a very vivid image of her, dwarfed by the cello she is constantly carrying up and down the stairs, so that it will not be seen as an intrusion upon the family space, and slipping into rooms where she disappears into the wallpaper. She is constantly whipping off letters, teeming with family secrets, to her friend, Gertrude. They are peppered with other bits of wisdom, the two spinsters share, such as this,

In Mediterranean countries as one knows, the sun brings girls to maturity much earlier—and I have my own theory that the Vitamin E in ripe olives has a stimulating effect on the sexual organs.

Another element that Taylor handles with perfection is the subtle, but very real, differences between the generations, from the naive love-sickness of Lou to the thorny recognition of aging that Kate finds in herself. With Dermot planted right between the young and the old, and unable to easily fit into either group, there is a poignantly heightened awareness of the divide. Each of Taylor’s characters, young or old, is drawn with an authenticity that brings them to life, exposing their inner thoughts, insecurities and dreams with a kind and loving hand. Even the minor characters, such as the curate and Dermot’s mother, are fully-realized and stir sympathies and understanding.

In a Summer Season is a novel about time and timing, about love and loss, about finding the place where you fit or being unable to. There are family tensions and stirrings of recognition that spring from natural sources, the kind of feelings each of us has probably known at one time or the other in the course of our lives. There are fragile hearts, trying not to be damaged and inevitably damaging others, and a sense that life is a series of changes and regardless of our intents or wishes, relationships morph, and grow or die.

Taylor addresses all of this with such a spartan style in which not a word or thought is wasted. It is this very restraint that makes the impact of her writing so effective. My appreciation for her grows with each of her novels I read, and I am looking forward with relish to the next one. show less

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 show more 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. show less

Elizabeth Taylor wrote wrote beautiful, subtle human dramas with such wonderful clarity. The stories that she wrote were wonderfully insightful about people and their relationships; and they reward close reading because she had such a wonderful eye and ear and because she was so very good at making every detail exactly right – and worthy of notice.

This novel – her eighth – is about love. It shows different kinds of love, it shows how love can change; and it shows how love affects one family and the people around them, and how it changes them and their lives, over the course of one summer season.

Kate was a young widow and she has recently married for the second time. Her new husband, Dermot, has tried a number of careers without show more ever finding the right one. He isn’t particularly driven, but he wants to do something, to play the role that he feels he should be playing.

Kate and Dermot are happy together as a couple.

‘Separated from their everyday life, as if in a dream or on a honeymoon, Kate and Dermot were under the spell of the gentle weather and blossoming countryside. They slept in bedrooms like corners of auction rooms stacked with old fashioned furniture, they made love in hummocky beds, and gave rise to much conjecture in bar parlours where that sat drinking alone, not talking much, though clearly intent on each other.’

Family life though, brings complications

Dermot has a good relationship with Kate’s son, Tom, who is working his way up in his grandfather’s business and having fun with a string of girlfriends; but he struggles with Kate’s daughter, Lou, who is back from boarding school for the holidays and hates that somebody else is taking her father’s place and making her mother the subject of gossip.

Kate is fully aware of Dermot’s weaknesses, but she accepts them, and tells herself that they can be – they will be happy.

But it becomes clear that their marriage has fault lines.

‘On the way home they quarreled – or, rather, she listened to Dermot quarreling with an imaginary Kate, who supplied him with imaginary retorts, against which he was able to build up his indignation. Then, when they were nearly home, he began to punish himself, and Kate realised that the more he basked in blame, the more it would turn out to be all hers; her friends, for close friends of hers they would become, would seem to have lined up to aggravate him, and her silence would be held to account for his lack of it.'

Dermot doesn’t share many of the interests and attitudes of Kate and her friends; he feels inferior, he resents that, and he resents that he can’t quite establish himself in the position he wants.

This becomes clear over the course of the summer.

In the first act of this two act drama family life simply plays out. Lou is drawn to the young local curate and she spends her summer caught up with parish affairs and events. Kate’s Aunt Ethel, who lives with the family is caught up with her own concerns, but she is worried about the family and she quietly does what she can for them.

In the second act Kate prepares for the return home of her best friend’s widower Charles and his daughter Araminta. They have been away since his wife died, they have never met Dermot, and Kate worries that the presence of an old friend, with so much shared history and so many common interests will unsettle him.

'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.'

She is right, and, quite unwittingly, Tom and Araminta, upset the precarious balance of Kate’s family. Tom is fascinated by Araminta, an aspiring model, who is beautiful, cool and distant; the first girl he wants but cannot win. And the return of her own friend unsettles Kate as well as Dermot.

There is little plot here, but the characters and the relationships are so well drawn that it really doesn’t matter.

The minor characters are particularly well drawn. I was particularly taken with Ethel, a former suffragette who wrote gossipy letters to her old friend in Cornwall but also had a practical and unsentimental concern for family; with Dermot’s mother, Edwina, who tried to push her son forward and was inclined to blame Kate for his failings; and with the cook, Mrs Meacock, who experimented with American food and was compiling a book.

They brought a different aspects to the story, as did Lou’s involvement with the curate.

There are so many emotions here, including some wonderful moments of humour that are beautifully mixed into the story.

‘Love was turning Tom hostile to every one person but one. They all affronted him by cluttering up the earth, by impinging on his thoughts, He tried to drive them away from his secret by rudeness and he reminded Ethel of an old goose she had once had who protected her nest with such hissings, such clumsy ferocity, that she claimed the attention of even the unconcerned.’

I believed in these people and their relationships; they all lived and breathed, and Elizabeth Taylor told all of their stories so very well.

The summer is perfectly evoked, and this book is very well rooted in its particular time and place.

I loved the first act of this book, when I read that I thought that this might become my favourite of Elizabeth Taylor’s books, but I loved the second act a little less. It felt just a little bit predictable, a little bit like something I’ve read before and I couldn’t help wondering if the dénouement came from a need to do something to end the story rather than simply being a natural end.

It was love though, and I can explain away all my concerns by telling myself that stories do repeat in different lives and that lives often take unexpected turns, and can be changed by events that are quite unexpected.

I’m glad that I finally picked this book up, and that I have other books by Elizabeth Taylor to read and to re-read. show less