You'll Enjoy It When You Get There

Starred review from July 28, 2014
This captivating collection of 29 stories by Taylor—a British novelist who wrote 11 novels (including At Mrs. Lippincote’s) and four story collections—includes an introduction by Margaret Drabble, who edited the book. Most of the stories revolve around female protagonists in unremarkable English settings. The title story is about a young girl named Rhoda, who attends a ball with her father. Her glamorous mother is sick and unable to attend, but she advises awkward Rhoda not to be shy. Their dynamic is emblematic of the tension between expectation and reality that affects many of Taylor’s characters. In “The Letter Writers,” spinster Emily finally meets a famous novelist she’s admired from afar through a decade of epistolary friendship. Unfortunately, the meeting is awkward and strained, leaving Emily feeling ashamed. In “The Prerogative of Love,” young, beautiful Arabella floats through her aunt’s lunch party, filling the elder guests with a longing for their youth and levity. In “Flesh,” a middle-aged pair on vacation strike up a brief adulterous romance, but are ultimately foiled. Taylor’s vulnerable characters are simultaneously touching and heartbreaking.

August 1, 2014
A newly selected volume of short fiction by a much-admired but not widely known English writer showcases her subtle insights. Taylor's (1912-1975) reputation has ebbed and flowed in both her native England and in the U.S., where recent reissues of two of her 11 novels, Angel and A Game of Hide and Seek, have helped return her to the public eye. This book of 29 stories, edited and introduced by Drabble, reflects the breadth of her creative life as well as her nuanced grasp of human interactions. The tales are often located in a finely detailed, middle-class domestic setting where the tone and minutiae are very English: gardens, glasses of sherry, village pubs, marmalade, class differences, Austen-ish wit. Frequently noting the weather, the seasons, flora and fauna, Taylor considers, usually from a female perspective, questions of marriage, isolation, love and aging. The collection opens with a novella, Hester Lilly, which charts the strains imposed on an established marriage by the arrival of the husband's young cousin. This theme of individuals struggling within an existing relationship recurs often, as in "Gravement Endommage," a glimpse of a couple that has survived wartime separation but is not at peace together. The title story, one of several featuring younger women outgrowing their youth, captures the exquisite discomfort of a daughter deputizing for her mother at a formal dinner. Among the most memorable is "The Letter-Writers," a model of unarticulated intensity in which two long-term correspondents come together for the first time and fear their "eyes might meet and they would see in one another's nakedness and total loss." Sensitive souls are scrutinized with delicate English understatement.

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Starred review from September 1, 2014
Back in her day as a writer, encompassing the years between the 1945 publication of her first novel, At Mrs. Lippincote's, and the 1976 posthumous publication of her last novel, Blaming, Elizabeth Taylor enjoyed acclaim as one of Britain's finest postwar fiction writers. These days, however, her work has suffered neglect, and for Taylor to have lost any degree of popular and critical attention is, in a word, shameful. Fortunately, New York Review Books is stepping up to the plate to win Taylor new readership and regard. This new selection of her short stories follows the publisher's recent reissue of two of Taylor's most highly regarded novels, A Game of Hide and Seek (1951) and Angel (1957). What emerges from this gathering of 29 stories is not only a restatement of Taylor's prowess as a subtle social satirist but also the primacy of short fiction within her oeuvre. These stories, selected by esteemed British novelist Margaret Drabble, herself a witty and discerning chronicler of middle-class social mores, were drawn from Taylor's four original collections, Hester Lily (1954), The Blush (1958), A Dedicated Man (1965), and The Devastating Boys (1972). Taylor has indicated in interviews that her favorite writer was Jane Austen, whose back-of-her-hand familiarity with her patch of county England was matched by Taylor's second-nature understanding of her own backyard, which was village life in the Thames Valley. Quiet, unsensational, but at the same time never fusty, her stories reveal a keen eye for the foibles of the middle class living in relatively comfortable circumstances. Her perception has been applauded by critics since the beginning of her career; she creates her characters with both gentle humor and sympathetic pity, which attracted readers during her lifetime and should attract new readers today. Her short stories are undeserving of the label delicate, which, as a pejorative, has often been thrown in their direction. To the contrary, Taylor's fiction demonstrates a quick, sharp vitality, appropriately delivered in a greatly economical style, which pleases with its brevity, clarity, and avoidance of overworked images and metaphors. In fact, her style so perfectly matches her milieu that it is transparent, and for that reason, her fiction will remind contemporary readers, in its subtle accuracy, of the work of Alice Munro. It may seem a small factor initially, but readers of her short fiction will soon appreciate her brilliance at opening lines, which certainly is an asset in immediately bringing readers into the narrative, which in turn is an asset for the necessary speed with which short fiction must attract and deliver. Take, for example, the first two lines of The Benefactress: Four widows lived in the almshouse beside the church. On the other side of the wall, their husband's graves were handy. The story that is thus introduced is about two village women feeling sorry for each other, each one believing her attitude constitutes charitable work. A subtle story premise, yes, but the execution is flawless. The opening line of Flesh Phyl was always one of the first to come into the bar in the evenings, for what she called her aperitif, and which, in reality, amounted to two hours' steady drinking finds Taylor visiting her customary characters as they behave in ways predictable to them but, on this occasion, in a foreign land. In this story, an affair threatens to ensnare a middle-aged married woman who goes on holiday with the purpose of getting her stamina back after surgery. The result is a typical Taylor amalgam of humor and understanding. Tall Boy is an interesting story that opens with this line: This Sunday had begun...