Eva Trout, by Elizabeth Bowen
Eva Trout, by Elizabeth Bowen
After school Eva, accompanying her father on global business trips, had constantly sent picture postcards to Miss Smith from wherever she found herself. She obtained glimpses of Miss Smith when back in London. As a wedding present, she had sent an enormous, glitteringly-fitted picnic basket from Fortnum & Mason’s: the bride would have liked to exchange it for comestibles, but dared not; Eva often visited Larkins. Iseult Smith’s abandonment of a star career for an obscure marriage puzzled those for whom it was hearsay only-but the reason leaped to the eye: the marriage was founded on a cerebral young woman’s first physical passion. The Arbles had now been the Arbles for some years-so far, no children. Accordingly, room for Eva. She had had her way. Visits terminate, visitors have to go-she now was a visitor no longer.
What had deteriorated?
I’ve read one other Elizabeth Bowen book, The Death of the Heart, and I’m still trying to get a feel for the elements these books have in common. Both books feature tragic heroines trying to find their true selves in a world of self-absorption. The title character of Eva Trout is not really described physically, except that she’s very tall, but with a name like Trout, it's hard not to think of her as other than someone fishlike, from Innsmouth. She tends to make good first impressions but rebuffs people who want to follow through. Her parents die when she’s young, leaving her an heiress with an exasperated guardian, and she spends the bulk of the book “changing scenes” by going from one place to another at a moment’s notice. Is she running away from something undefined, or running towards something undefined, or both?
I tended to get exasperated along with the other characters, as the plot hinges on several avoidable misunderstandings, and Eva and the other major characters make many bad decisions for the sake of Teh Dramaz. I’m past the age of thinking that’s a good thing to do, and so watching other people who should know better making those mistakes just makes me wince. Tragedy strikes often, sometimes by happenstance and sometimes by acts of thoughtless, impulsive cruelty. Eva does a major plot spoiler in the middle of the book, and something senselessly bad happens to her at the very end, and I kept scratching my head, asking myself, why did they do that? Why did Bowen decide to write them doing that?
Bowen had a genius for telling stories in unconventional ways. I loved the way important plot developments and character background were revealed through letters and conversations between unrelated characters. One of my favorite sections consists of a chapter-length letter written by a stranger who sits next to Eva on an airplane trip, who does not appear anywhere else in the story and who knows nothing of anyone else except for the conversation he has with Eva. This letter, recapping the conversation and the character’s (often wrong) guesses about Eva from observation contains bombshells of Reveal and is a masterful lesson by example of good storytelling.
Definitely a well-written book, though I remain a little puzzled as to *what*, exactly, was written so well.
After school Eva, accompanying her father on global business trips, had constantly sent picture postcards to Miss Smith from wherever she found herself. She obtained glimpses of Miss Smith when back in London. As a wedding present, she had sent an enormous, glitteringly-fitted picnic basket from Fortnum & Mason’s: the bride would have liked to exchange it for comestibles, but dared not; Eva often visited Larkins. Iseult Smith’s abandonment of a star career for an obscure marriage puzzled those for whom it was hearsay only-but the reason leaped to the eye: the marriage was founded on a cerebral young woman’s first physical passion. The Arbles had now been the Arbles for some years-so far, no children. Accordingly, room for Eva. She had had her way. Visits terminate, visitors have to go-she now was a visitor no longer.
What had deteriorated?
I’ve read one other Elizabeth Bowen book, The Death of the Heart, and I’m still trying to get a feel for the elements these books have in common. Both books feature tragic heroines trying to find their true selves in a world of self-absorption. The title character of Eva Trout is not really described physically, except that she’s very tall, but with a name like Trout, it's hard not to think of her as other than someone fishlike, from Innsmouth. She tends to make good first impressions but rebuffs people who want to follow through. Her parents die when she’s young, leaving her an heiress with an exasperated guardian, and she spends the bulk of the book “changing scenes” by going from one place to another at a moment’s notice. Is she running away from something undefined, or running towards something undefined, or both?
I tended to get exasperated along with the other characters, as the plot hinges on several avoidable misunderstandings, and Eva and the other major characters make many bad decisions for the sake of Teh Dramaz. I’m past the age of thinking that’s a good thing to do, and so watching other people who should know better making those mistakes just makes me wince. Tragedy strikes often, sometimes by happenstance and sometimes by acts of thoughtless, impulsive cruelty. Eva does a major plot spoiler in the middle of the book, and something senselessly bad happens to her at the very end, and I kept scratching my head, asking myself, why did they do that? Why did Bowen decide to write them doing that?
Bowen had a genius for telling stories in unconventional ways. I loved the way important plot developments and character background were revealed through letters and conversations between unrelated characters. One of my favorite sections consists of a chapter-length letter written by a stranger who sits next to Eva on an airplane trip, who does not appear anywhere else in the story and who knows nothing of anyone else except for the conversation he has with Eva. This letter, recapping the conversation and the character’s (often wrong) guesses about Eva from observation contains bombshells of Reveal and is a masterful lesson by example of good storytelling.
Definitely a well-written book, though I remain a little puzzled as to *what*, exactly, was written so well.