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ELIZABETH BOWEN :

No mystery that Prothero reviews things like I do, and his name rhymes with elbow.
The Zeno’s Paradox /\ Time syndrome, Ghosts, Shadows, Psychological Furniture, Apple Trees, Anti-Natalism, Triangulations, double negatives, mid to late life crises, Aickman synergy, Bowen herself.
Fractured, if not bruised.
My long Bowen /\ Aickman journey of reviewing her fiction has now ended — posing myself as the shadowy third side to complete the triangle out of the two-sided elbow or circumflex or Kôrner? Or just another meddling middling finger in Francis’s finger-BOWL?
Eva Trout, already reviewed by me, the final consolation.

I don’t think anyone before has mapped out this gestalt of themes in Bowen fiction, particularly the Elbow Syndrome as such a hugely predominating one and the Aickman synergy.
Unless you know different?

Links to my reviews: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/31260-2/

Just to add that the recent Robert Aickman biography (Tartarus Press) seems, after all, to show conclusively that Bowen and Aickman met in person at least once.

Do please see my further comment below about particular stories…

2 thoughts on “/\

  1. All her ten novels are special in different ways.

    As to her 108 stories, I recommend them all. Many are in her Vintage collected stories volume, cheaply obtainable.
    The ones that I consider the nearest to Aickman:
    LOVE, HAND IN GLOVE, THE DEMON LOVER, THE INHERITED CLOCK, MYSTERIOUS KÔR, THE APPLE TREE, THE DANCING MISTRESS, NO. 16, GREEN HOLLY, THE EVIL THAT MEN DO, FOOTHOLD, A WALK IN THE WOODS, THE DISINHERITED, RECENT PHOTOGRAPH, HUMAN HABITATION, CHARITY, ANN LEE’S, DEAD MABELLE, FLOWERS WILL DO, LOOK AT ALL THOSE ROSES, GONE AWAY, THE CLAIMANT, THE PARROT, THE CHEERY SOUL, THE SHADOWY THIRD, MRS MOYSEY, PINK MAY, THE STORM, HER TABLE SPREAD.

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