The Lost Life

Is it possible to fall in love with a book? I think I have, with The Lost Life…
This is how it happened. The publisher has sent me a copy of A New England Affair which is book #3 of Steven Carroll’s The Eliot Quartet (and just happens to have one of the most unappealing covers I’ve seen in a very long time). And I realised that #SmacksForehead I still hadn’t read not only its predecessor Book #2 A World of Other People, (with a not quite so ghastly but likewise unenticing cover) but also Book #1 The Lost Life, both of which I had bought as soon as they were released because I love Steven Carroll’s novels. I love his contemplative style, the way he notices the very small things about life, and his extraordinary perceptions about show more the inner workings of the human mind.
I found the books on the C shelf, tucked away behind a pushy double row of shiny new Ds and Es. I couldn’t believe it when I opened up The Lost Life and realised it had been sitting there since 2009! It is such a beautiful little book, the size of the original Penguins, and designed not by the Harper Collins Design Studio but by Sandy Cull of gogoGinko. The sepia toned image of the paper roses is on a separate half-sized dustjacket on gorgeous textured paper (which I carefully removed to read the book because I didn’t want to damage it). Underneath, the book boards are imprinted with the faint image of a single large rose. I was falling in love before I’d even turned a single page.
And then, the book. Steven Carroll is sheer genius. With the most intricate of allusions, in a captivating story about different kinds of love, he stirs memories of so many other pleasurable hours of reading other books. It’s like those Winter days at the beach with a loved one when you walk hand in hand remembering all the other seasons when you were falling in love and looking forward to a future together. The present is all muddled up with the past and the future, enhancing all three. Which is a very ordinary way of saying what T S Eliot says so elegantly in his poems about Time…

Alas, my copy doesn’t have the dustjacket…
It was late, and I was reading in bed, but next thing, I was up on the library steps peering at the top shelves hunting out my Faber & Faber first edition of Eliot’s Collected Poems 1909-1962. Carroll’s novel begins at Burnt Norton, a mansion in the Cotswolds, and I remembered the poem of that name. (You can see a picture of the mansion here, and also an analysis of the poem if you are keen). ‘Burnt Norton’ is the first of The Four Quartets, and it begins like this:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is irredeemable.

(I am ashamed to say that this beautiful book of poetry is marred by inane marginalia, noting such intellectual gems as ‘twist’, and ‘circular not sequential’ and ‘irregular lines’. These marks (fortunately only in pencil) date from my days at university, and they didn’t stop me re-reading the whole collection before pressing on with Carroll’s novel. But, trust me, you do not need to know a thing about TS Eliot and his poetry to love The Lost Life… show less

Following the success of his Miles Franklin awardwinning novel, The Time We Have Taken, Steven Carroll moves us away from Melbourne suburbia, and presents us with an absorbing tale set in an English country town in 1934.

Young couple Catherine and Jonathan retreat to a secluded rose garden one afternoon, and find themselves in view of a private ceremony taking place between poet T S Eliot and his secret lover, Emily Hale. For the next month, the lives of these four characters come into alignment and the awkward relationship between 18-year-old Catherine and her teacher (who is also an actress) ‘Miss Hale’ becomes the main focus of the book. Carroll’s ability to turn an ordinary moment into something sacred makes this novel a show more profound exploration of human desire, endurance, maturity and regret. It encourages the idea of maximising each moment and living in the present despite the melancholy undertone that this is often easier said than done.

His early novels have settings that are equally exotic in character, and equally removed from us in time and space. On this trip, however, the author brings to the drawing-room reticence of Britain between the wars the same kindliness and air of benediction that hangs over his Glenroy trilogy. The Lost Life concludes in the grounds of Burnt Norton about six decades later, with another private ceremony, this time undertaken by the elderly Catherine.

It is a novel that ends as it began, with Eliot's great poem, gracefully acknowledging that "only through time time is conquered".

The Lost Life is another excellnet offering from one of Australia's leading authors. It will not disappoint fans . show less

The story's focus is on the relationship between poet TS Eliot and American Emily Hale. Friends in youth they have a platonic affair which spans many years because Eliot is married. His wife suffers mental illness and he is unable to divorce her because she wont give him up.
Carroll's take on this includes two other characters a young woman and her male companion who when strolling through a garden are interrupted by Eliot and Hale who are burying a tin . The young woman recognises Hale , she has been employed to clean this American woman's rented cottage. The tin is then dug up by the young woman's companion which then puts her in a moral quandary. A nice story about first love and although the writing is quite beautiful he does tend show more to take an entire page to make a small point which I personally find annoying about his style. show less

Loved this book, the structure, the language, the characters