A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor

A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor

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.

Elizabeth Taylor (1912-1975) was born and raised in Reading, Berkshire, England. She worked as a governess and later at a library after finishing school. She spent much of her married life in the Buckinghamshire village of Penn.