373. The House in Paris

The House in Paris
Elizabeth Bowen
1935
Around 270 pages

I love novels that take place during a single day. There's something very feminine about those stories. There is so much significance in our everyday actions that's difficult to capture if your characters are having adventures all over the place. And not all personalities are capable of the kind of growth that characters experience in plots with a larger time frames. There's something very real about nobody changing.

Eleven-year-old Henrietta Mountjoy, accompanied by Miss Naomi Fisher, is stopping by Naomi's sickly mother on her way to visit her grandmother. Henrietta is expected to spend the day with Leopold, a nine year old boy waiting to meet his mother for the first time that day. The children are fascinated with each other, in a very believable way.  And Leopold's parentage is explored.

I enjoy Bowen's writing, she gave the scenes with the children the emotional weight they deserved. As children we are capable of creating strong emotional bonds with people we never see again. Elizabeth Bowen should be wider read, I enjoy her novels immensely.

RATING: ****-

Interesting Facts:

Virginia Woolf loved the book and said in a letter: "I had the feeling that your world imposed itself on my world, while I read, which only happens when one is taken in hand by a work."

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