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A review by siria
At Mrs. Lippincote's by Elizabeth Taylor
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
A bleakly humorous novel about conformity and displacement, set during the last year of WW2. The Davenants spend a year living in a rented house—the Mrs Lippincote's of the title—and through Elizabeth Taylor's eyes we observe how they interact with one another and with the world around them. Taylor's approach to her main characters is deft and emotionally intelligent—they are sometimes awful but mostly just recognisably muddling through life; sometimes sympathetic but rarely likeable.
The secondary characters, particularly the group of working-class (gasp) Communists with whom one of the Davenants falls in with, convince less. There are some moments of observation here that are truly pleasurable to read, but there was something about Taylor's prose that I struggled to get on with: something disjointed, opaque. There was also a brief, jarring bout of antisemitism in one chapter.
A solid book, but I can't say it's one that has me dying to rush out and read more of Taylor's work.
The secondary characters, particularly the group of working-class (gasp) Communists with whom one of the Davenants falls in with, convince less. There are some moments of observation here that are truly pleasurable to read, but there was something about Taylor's prose that I struggled to get on with: something disjointed, opaque. There was also a brief, jarring bout of antisemitism in one chapter.
A solid book, but I can't say it's one that has me dying to rush out and read more of Taylor's work.
Content Warnings
Minor: Antisemitism