Bøger af Rosamond Lehmann

Mamma was fast asleep at home, her spirit lapped in unconsciousness. Her dreams would not divine that her daughter had stolen out to meet a lover.And next door also they slept unawares, while one of them broke from the circle and came alone to clasp a stranger . . .'Judith Earle, over-earnest and inexperienced, has always been a little in love with each of the four cousins who come to stay next door and, on her return from Cambridge, becomes madly in love with one of them - Roddy, the 'sensation-hunter'. DUSTY ANSWER traces with delicate nostalgia childhood friendships and the pangs of thwarted young love.

A woman searches for a fresh start on a remote Caribbean island in this sequel to Rosamond Lehmann's classic The Ballad and the Source The year is 1933. After a heart-wrenching betrayal by her married lover, Rebecca Landon leaves London for a tiny island in the Caribbean. There, she meets a colony of expatriates, including the voluble Captain Cunningham and his wife, Ellie, who were the first white settlers on the isle. She also meets Johnny, a married former pilot who was crippled in the war and now lives as a recluse. Drawn together by their mutual pain and sorrow, he and Rebecca are soon swept into a passionate affair. But there's yet another presence on the island: the spirit of Sibyl Jardine, a scandalous beauty who fascinated Rebecca as a child and has left an unforgettable mark on the woman Rebecca has become. Mrs. Jardine also came to this remote island to escape, and before she died, she forged a powerful connection with Johnny. Does her ghost still cast a shadow over the island's inhabitants? What is her unfinished business and what is she trying to communicate to Rebecca and Johnny? Or is it Rebecca who is trying to communicate something, driven by her own need for closure? This is a poignant, uplifting novel about the lives we leave behind, our eternal quest for love, and the answers we seek when our faith is shaken.

A young girl befriends an elderly woman during the First World War in this remarkable novel by one of Britain's best-loved authors Sibyl Jardine, the former best friend of Rebecca Landon's grandmother, has recently returned to the Priory, her home at the top of a hill. Rebecca is instantly drawn in by Sibyl's magnetic personality and blunt, shocking manner. Decades earlier, Sibyl had left her husband Charles for another man and, as a result, lost her daughter Ianthe. Now she is finally about to meet her three grandchildren, who will become an integral part of Rebecca's life as she journeys into adolescence. At the heart of this extraordinary novel is the enigma that is Sibyl Jardine: Is she a saint or a sinner? Is she a duplicitous lover or a woman who has been unjustly punished? Played out in a series of conversations between Rebecca, Sibyl Jardine, Jardine's granddaughter Maisie, and a Cockney maid named Tilly, The Ballad and the Source is a tale of perception and memory, passion and betrayal, and the fearsome power of a mother's love.

Two sisters fall for the same man in this New York Timesbestselling novel of WWII-era England by an ';immensely readable' author (Elizabeth Jane Howard). Rickie Masters is married to Madeleine, who is sitting out the war in the country with their children. Their domestic serenity is shattered when Rickie falls in love with Madeleine's sister, Dinah, and they begin a clandestine, guilt-ridden affair. When Madeleine discovers their infidelity, accusations are hurled and hard choices are made. Then, a year before the war officially ends, tragedy strikes, and it is only after an estrangement of fifteen years that Madeleine and Dinah will begin to struggle toward some kind of reconciliation. Shifting between the three characters' viewpoints, and shuttling seamlessly between past and present, The Echoing Grove is a story of life: messy, unpredictable, and unstoppable. It is about family, the things that hold us accountable, the events that lead to life-altering decisions, and the emotions that make us human. And above all it is about love: romantic love, married love, familial love, and illicit love. The heart wants what it wants, regardless of the cost.

A seductive new stranger becomes the symbol of everything two married women secretly long for in this richly imagined novel by one of the most distinguished writers of the twentieth century Thirty-four-year-old Grace Fairfax lives a dull, conventional existence with her dull, conventional husband, Tom, in a dreary manufacturing town in the North of England. A year ago, when a fortune-teller told her that her life lacked will and purpose, she wasn't surprised. Every day the same predictable routineit's a wonder she doesn't go mad. Then Hugh Miller and his sister, Clare, descend on the town. Clare is young and beautiful. Hugh seems to possess everything lacking in Grace's life: passion, vitality, and most important, the freedom to do as he pleases. Grace's best friend, Norah MacKay, isn't immune to the handsome stranger's charms, either. Married to Gerald, a curmudgeonly university professor, the mother of two has her own fantasies of desire and liberation. But Hugh isn't the man Grace and Norah imagine him to be. In this story of two strangers who cast an otherworldly enchantment on an entire town and its inhabitants, A Note in Music presents an intensely moving portrait of marriageits disappointments, joys, jealousies, fears, and loneliness, and the truths that remain unspoken.

Rosamond Lehmann's first novel, now a classic of British literature, tells a luminous story of friendship, discovery, and forbidden love This debut novel, set in the early 1900s, tells the story of Judith Earle, a solitary only child growing up in a sprawling house in the Thames Valley. From an early age, she is fascinated by the six cousins who live next door. There's boring, faithful Martin, of the red cheeks and perennially scabby knees; beautiful, aristocratic Charlie, whom Judith secretly adores and who will die in the First World War; reckless Julian, who turns lying into an art; enigmatic Roddy, who visits only occasionally; and Mariella, whose marriage to her first cousin will end tragically, and who lives with the scandal of her mother running off with another man. Every year, the Fyfe family returns to this idyllic corner of England. Childhood friendships blossom into adolescent romance as the cousins fall in love with Judithand she with them. But her world transforms forever when she meets a beautiful fellow student named Jennifer. A novel in many ways ahead of its time, Dusty Answer is about love: first love, love on the rebound, taboo love, the loss of love. With its gentle indictment of England's class system, it is also about what goes on behind the closed doors of genteel society, and the self-deceptions we spin in order to give our lives meaning.

The tale of the unlikely friendship between and an old woman and a young girl, this is one of Rosamond Lehmann's finest novels Ten year old Rebecca is living in the country with her family when Sibyl Jardine, an enigmatic and powerful old woman, returns to her property in the neighbourhood. The two families, once linked in the past, meet again, with the result that Rebecca becomes drawn into the strange complications of the old lady's life - with her husband, her errant daughter and her grandchildren. Through the spellbound eyes of the young Rebecca we enter into an intricate and scandalous family history and slowly the story of the passionate, stormy life of Mrs. Jardine unfolds.

Grace Fairfax lives with her dull, conventional husband Tom in a grey manufacturing town in the north of England. At thirty-four she finds that her external life of dreary routine fails to match up to her lush, wistful and dreamy internal life. Norah, her energetic and chaotic friend, is equally settled in her own marriage to an irritable university professor.Then Hugh Miller and his sister Claire descend upon the quiet town. On all four, the hypnotic charm of these two visitors exerts an enchanting spell. And after their departure, life - having been violently disrupted - will never be quite the same again . . .

'A truly great book. It is beautifully written, shrewdly observed and deftly crafted, but the novel's real concern is what it means for a woman to live an authentic life' Elizabeth DayA chance encounter with the man who enchanted her as a teenager leads Olivia Curtis into to a forbidden love affair. He is now married, and Olivia's life changes to one of secret meetings, brief phone calls and snatched liaisons in anonymous hotel rooms.Years ahead of its time when first published in 1936, this subtle and powerful novel shocked it readers with its searing honesty and passionate portrayal of clandestine love.* Books included in the VMC 40th anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame

On her seventeenth birthday, Olivia Curtis receives: a diary for her innermost thoughts, a china ornament, a ten-shilling note and a roll of flame-coloured silk for her first ball dress. She anticipates the dance, the greatest and most terrifying event of her life so far, with uncertainty and excitement. For her pretty sister Kate, it is sure to be a triumph, but what will it be for shy, awkward Olivia?Rosamond Lehmann, one of the best-loved writers of the twentieth century, perfectly captures the emotions of a girl poised on the threshold of womanhood.

In 1933 we meet Rebecca, heroine of THE BALLAD AND THE SOURCE - but in a different world, on many levels. Betrayed by her married lover, Rebecca arrives alone at a small Caribbean island. Here, along with the splendidly eccentric members of the British expatriate colony, she meets the former ace pilot Johnny, crippled now, a misanthropic recluse: for both of them their passionate affair the powerful life force love can be. Here too she encounters voices from the past and the vibrant spirit of Mrs. Jardine - voices which remind Rebecca of the girl she was and the woman she could become.

Two sisters: Madeleine and Dinah. One husband: Rickie Masters. For many years now, Dinah, exotic and sensual, has conducted a clandestine affair with Rickie. Madeleine, calm and resolute, has accepted that her marriage has been of limited success. Rickie's sudden death makes widows of both sisters in this highly imaginative novel that explores with extraordinary insight the sublimity, the rivalry and the pain of personal relationships.'She makes a mood, an atmosphere, which is never forgotten . . . The inner voice of women talking to themselves about their love affairs, knowing that it is hopeless, having to go ahead anyway, expecting the end as soon as it begins. That, of course, is what Rosamond Lehmann does best' Sunday Times