cyphomandra

I saw George Bernard Shaw's play Heartbreak House the other night, a good production of a play that I didn't love, but liked a lot and which had a number of bits that snag in the memory. It has a lot of interesting points to make about power, as it plays out in British society, and a neat tendency to avoid (or invert) the obvious conclusion. It was written before WWI, a conflict Shaw adamantly opposed, and the ending is tragic-comic and apocalyptic all at once.

Anyway. These three books are also British, also interesting, and also, as with Heartbreak House, indelibly marked by WWI, but I don't think any of them will linger the same way as the play did - they're smoother, somehow, and my attention slides off them.

( A.S. Byatt, The children’s book. )

( R.F. Delderfield, To serve them all my days. )

( Pamela Frankau, Slaves of the lamp. )