Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor

In the past, when a certain fretful kind of melancholy would strike me, I could usually cure it by heading out to a nearby bookstore and grabbing any green-spined novel from the collection of Virago books. As I result I pride myself on a pretty good collection. Now that Virago has a website and books of many colours, I was lucky enough to get a free copy of Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor, thanks to a contest in their email newsletter.

Blaming is the story of an English widow who is befriended by an American novelist. These are characters we immediately recognize, a life crisis we all dread (husband dies on while couple is on vacation in a strange land), and the nuances of behaviour are relentless in their accuracy. We fully sense the haze, the irritation the heroine (she's really more an anti-heroine) experiences throughout her ordeal. She doesn't enjoy travelling, especially with her convalescent husband. She doesn't like the American woman who helps her through the funeral arrangements and trip home. She isn't sympathetic or interested in anyone else and this is the nagging element that comprises the plot - what happens when one is thoughtlessly ungenerous. But we think, of course she's in mourning, how can she be expected to be generous? So it is also a critical analysis of how our society deals with death and its aftermath. It reminded me most of the cinema of Eric Rohmer, one of those self-centred characters that can be blamed primarily for what they don't do.

So all in all, not entirely riveting but for someone like myself who enjoys character study and psychology, a very good read.

Buy it from Virago.co.uk

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