A View of the Harbour

Blindness and betrayal are Elizabeth Taylor s great subjects, and in "A View of the Harbour" she turns her unsparing gaze on the emotional and sexual politics of a seedy seaside town that s been left behind by modernity. Tory, recently divorced, depends more and more on the company of her neighbors Robert, a doctor, and Beth, a busy author of melodramatic novels. Prudence, Robert and Beth s daughter, disapproves of the intimacy that has grown between her parents and Tory and the gossip it has awakened in their little community. As the novel proceeds, Taylor s view widens to take in a range of characters from bawdy, nosey Mrs. Bracey; to a widowed young proprietor of the local waxworks, Lily Wilson; to the would-be artist Bertram while the book as a whole offers a beautifully observed and written examination of the fictions around which we construct our lives and manage our losses."