A Game of Hide and Seek in NYRB Classics

Feb 18, 2012 SarahC rated it it was amazing

Shelves: forgotten-classics, feelsomething

I happened upon Elizabeth Taylor, as I read that this novel was being republished and released last week. I am glad I did because it was a quiet, lovely read. The relationship is described and perhaps receives its best explanation in the beginning pages of this book. The couple, Harriet and Vesey, are playing actually a real game of hide and seek with Vesey's young cousins, Harriet's surrogate family at their relaxed home on the edge of town. Vesey and Harriet's friendship had grown here as they I happened upon Elizabeth Taylor, as I read that this novel was being republished and released last week. I am glad I did because it was a quiet, lovely read. The relationship is described and perhaps receives its best explanation in the beginning pages of this book. The couple, Harriet and Vesey, are playing actually a real game of hide and seek with Vesey's young cousins, Harriet's surrogate family at their relaxed home on the edge of town. Vesey and Harriet's friendship had grown here as they both had been welcomed by the Macmillan family through the years.

The description of their typical hide-and-seek game gives us a glimpse into the story of Harriet and Vesey as they sat quietly waiting to be found by the younger children: "The ticking of each heart, which they believed the other must hear, was like a pendulum rocking in in a hollow case...Vesey would move his eyes toward her, as if to move his head, too, would betray them...A different hiding place would have prolonged the search and their exquisite stay in heaven or hell; but neither could suggest what might mean their betrayal to one another."

This is a life-long story of two people, and I don't mean to make it sound too grand, but it is about more than marriage or betrayal or judgement. The novel starts out and ends much more than that. The undercurrent of other stories within the main story work to show us that because the beginning story is really the friendship between Vesey's aunt and Harriet's mother, who were bonded in girlhood through their work as suffragists. The main characters' life stories are important too. As Harriet's life reaches a difficult point, she seeks belonging and finds a job as a shop girl. Vesey breaks from his family to become an actor. Taylor gives these characters a life, a history, and a place in imagination beyond the pages of this book.

So many authors stumble with the challenge to carry the story through completely. In the attempt to tell emotional, subtle relationship stories, a trap door springs open and the attempt falls through, taking us with it. Not so with Taylor. This story is soulfully established and carried through to the end. This story is from life. It is not one that adds artificial ingredients to emotions so perfectly within our existence already.
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Feb 21, 2012 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle, nyrb-classics, fiction-20th-century, read-2012, british-literature, virago-modern-classics

Opening lines:
Sometimes in the long summer’s evenings, which are so marked a part of our youth, Harriet and Vesey played hide-and-seek with the younger children, running across the tufted meadows, their shoes yellow with the pollen of buttercups.

This is the love story between Harriet and Vesey, a love they captivated since their youth. However, their lives take a different course and Harriet married another man. But their love nevertheless persists even if this not brings a happy end to the stor ...more

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Jan 25, 2012 Nicholas During rated it really liked it

This is a cross-generational love story that delves not only into the idea of a relationship between two people, and how love can come about and lasts because of seemingly conflicting actions, but also how the bonds of a family in all the generations works to help and also hurt people. As the previous line shows this is not your average love story. Yes it ends badly. Yes the reader finds it difficult to understand how people behave that way (or love that person), but I think that is probably the ...more

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Aug 08, 2016 Corey rated it it was amazing

I cannot recommend Elizabeth Taylor highly enough. She is flat-out great. This is one of her best, moving, surprising, elegantly paced and beautifully written right up to the last page.

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