A View of the Harbour

A View of the Harbour is the fourth novel by Elizabeth Taylor I have read this year. I've enjoyed them all. A View of the Harbour is set in the small coastal village of Newby in England. It is an almost claustrophobic setting in which everyone (well, almost everyone) spends most of their time watching the comings and goings of their neighbours. Like many such novels, a stranger comes to town. In this case it is Bertram Hemingway, recently retired from his life at sea and now an amateur artist.

Almost all of the other main characters are women: the beautiful Tory, her best friend and neighbour Beth, Beth's teenage daughter Prudence, old Mrs Bracey the nosy invalid and Mrs Wilson, the lonely widow who runs the shabby Wax Museum. All the expected themes of such a set up are here, but at its heart I think it is a novel about women's lives. There is a character to represent every age and stage of a woman's life: from the child Stevie to the dying Mrs Bracey. The unwed, married, divorced and widowed are all accounted for. There are women with children and women without. There are those who dream of getting married and those who don't; those having affairs and those drowning in loneliness. There are secrets and surprises.

I liked this book but as I have already said, I like Elizabeth Taylor's novels. I like the subtle humour and the tinge of sadness she brings to her books. The edition I read had a introduction by Sarah Waters and in it she names Elizabeth Taylor as one of the great under-read and under-appreciated British authors of the twentieth century. She speculates this may be because she shares a name with a famous actress. I suspect this is true. Imagine writing serious fiction today with the name Angelina Jolie. It is, of course, a silly reason, but many things in life are silly. Only time will tell which Elizabeth Taylor is remembered best.