Elizabeth Bowen wrote Anglo-Irish and British fiction in which houses, social rituals and private relationships are unsettled by secrecy, war and emotional uncertainty. The Death of the Heart follows sixteen-year-old orphan Portia as she comes to live with her half-brother and his wife in London, observing an adult world whose politeness often conceals indifference or betrayal. The Heat of the Day is set during the Second World War and centres on Stella Rodney after she is told that her lover may be spying for Germany, while The Last September places a young woman's coming of age inside an Anglo-Irish household during the Irish War of Independence. Bowen's prose is psychologically exact and often elliptical rather than fast-moving. The Death of the Heart is the strongest introduction to Bowen's psychological fiction, while The Heat of the Day adds wartime espionage and The Last September places similar emotional uncertainty inside the politics of Anglo-Irish decline. Read more Less
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