A World of Love - by Elizabeth Bowen (Paperback)

About the Book

In this haunting novel, Bowen tells the story of an uneasy collection of relations living under one roof in Monte-fort, a decaying Irish manor house. While exploring the attic, Jane finds a packet of mysterious love letters that have explosive repercussions.

Book Synopsis

In a writing career that spanned the 1920s to the 1960s, Anglo-Irish author Elizabeth Bowen created a rich and nuanced body of work in which she enlarged the comedy of manners with her own stunning brand of emotional and psychological depth.

In A World of Love, an uneasy group of relations are living under one roof at Montefort, a decaying manor in the Irish countryside. When twenty-year-old Jane finds in the attic a packet of love letters written years ago by Guy, her mother's one-time fiance who died in World War I, the discovery has explosive repercussions. It is not clear to whom the letters are addressed, and their appearance begins to lay bare the strange and unspoken connections between the adults now living in the house. Soon, a girl on the brink of womanhood, a mother haunted by love lost, and a ruined matchmaker with her own claim on the dead wage a battle that makes the ghostly Guy as real a presence in Montefort as any of the living.

Review Quotes

"In the first rank of the brilliant women writers."--The New York Times

"In A World of Love Miss Bowen's powers are at their summit...perception, wit, and beauty flash from every page."--The New York Times Book Review

"One of the handful of great English novelists of [her] century."--The Washington Post

"Bowen writes beautifully--sometimes, in fact, so beautifully it hurts."--Time

About the Author

Elizabeth Bowen was born in Dublin in 1899, the only child of an Irish lawyer and landowner. Her book Bowen's Court (1942) is the history of her family and their house, in County Cork. Throughout her life, she divided her time between London and Bowen's Court, which she inherited. She wrote many acclaimed novels and short story collections, was awarded the CBE in 1948, and was made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1965. She died in 1973.