A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor (1951)

This is my first Taylor in a long while, and in many ways it was worth the wait. I had grown increasingly dissatisfied as I read through the first four some time ago, but most particularly with the one which finally brought the journey to its halt. Now comes this, and faith is restored to a large extent. She has an almost classically mid-century English attitude to words and what they convey. They are carefully chosen; so much so that I expect many modern readers would find the tone almost pedantic and precious - at least those who are not prepared to allow her her time. In this novel of longing, spread over perhaps twenty years, Harriet and Vesey just scrape by in remaining in each other's lives, as their first attraction at 18 becomes complicated not only by ordinary vicissitudes but by their own lack of will. It is humour which most graces the early parts of this book - fresh humour in children's exploits and tart humour in Harriet's work in a dress shop with its ill-assortment of eccentric and laborious assistants. The element which had darkened her previous novel, a kind of stiffness and tightness, then briefly comes to the fore where this one touches similar subject matter - 'young marrieds'. But the resigned and limpid ending of this one is quietly moving, with the drab of austerity Britain almost palpable though never accentuated.