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Jane Hyde
, January 09, 2008
(view all comments by Jane Hyde)
I've written a bit about Bowen's Friends and Relations on my reading blog at latewhenthecat.blogspot.com but will share a few thoughts here. This less well known novel of Bowen, from 1931, is a very subtle story of two sisters, the men they marry, and their upper middle class lives in Englsnd between the wars. it's a book that grows on the reader with repeated readings. One man marries the wrong sister, in a sense, and much of the novel shows how the two families' lives turn out and what becomes of the unacknowledged passion. Boiwen's treatment of her characters has been called cold by some reviewers, but rereading reveals her sympathy for them and the subtlety of her portrayal of the nuances of human emotion and behavior.
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