Ups and downs in the lives of four generations of women. Neville is forty three, married, her two children are grown up and she is planning to go back to medical school and finish the degree she gave up to marry. Neville’s mother Hilary is sixty three, and has no real interests in life apart from he

One of those books where I really didn’t like anybody. I suppose I liked Neville Bendish a bit. She was the first female we were introduced to in the book. She was celebrating her 43rd birthday and was caught up with middle-aged angst over that...that she had raised her children and that is all she

“May I ask your daughter’s age?”
“Nan is thirty-three”
“A dangerous Age”
“All Nan’s ages”, said Mrs Hilary, “have been dangerous. Nan is like that.”

All ages are dangerous in this book. It is the story of four generation of women in one family. From the wise and calm Grandmamma in her 80s to the insipi

“It wasn’t really touching to be young; it was touching not to be young, because you had less of life left. Touching to be thirty; more touching to be forty; tragic to be fifty; and heartbreaking to be sixty. As to seventy, as to eighty, one would feel as one did during the last dance of a ball, tir

The English writer Rose Macaulay – whose work spans the first half of the 20th century – seems to be enjoying something of a renaissance at the moment. First with the Virago reissues of Crewe Train and The World My Wilderness, and subsequently with the more recent publication of some of her earlier

What is NYRB Classics waiting for to reissue this book? I was lucky to find a battered copy in Montclair, NJ.
The story follows the fortunes of various female members of the Hilary family at the outset of the 1920s. The doyenne, Grandmamma, is a wise old owl, well-loved by everyone. In her 80s, she s