Our man in London is Henry Yorke (1905-1973) using the 'Henry Green' pen name and deliciously good at the writing game.

LOVING brings us into an ancient English castle in Ireland during WW II, with its clueless English highs and their servants - the central characters - distracted by sex, war news, sex, while living in a neutral country. Sex.

The help is not to deal direct with the locals; this highbrow stricture the lowbrow servants enforce upon each other: "Don't have nothing to do with them Irish or you'll likely bring our own blood on us. By reason of the IRA. And never forget."

Their incessant chatter in corridor, kitchen and below-stairs shows the servants' preoccupation with individual strategies to move up, move on, make a match, avoid work or trouble, keep trying, the younger ones, to get some sex.

In the novel before us, Green conjures the speech of Mr. O'Connor, Irish laborer, charged with the care of the peacocks on the castle grounds, with whom he lives: a man whose Irish is unintelligible to all except the maid, Kate, who readily translates for him, confiding to Edith, her comrade-in-brooms-&-linen, "I'd strip those rags off to give that pelt of his a good rub."

Green's fun extends to an insurance agent down from Dublin, inquiring about lost jewelry, who speaks with a lisp:

"It'th O.K. thon." . . . Thankth thon. . . . The familieth away? . . . I'll wager thixpenth you can never gueth my bithneth."

The plot of this comedy turns with the conversations:

"He's took that peacock little Albert killed, which Mrs. Welch hid away, and he's hung it in the outside larger. Swarming with maggots over our meat. How do you like that Miss Swift? It's wicked or worse it is."

"Little Albert killed?"

"No. One of the peacocks crossed 'is path so he up and kill the thing. That's a flea bite, there's plenty more of the creatures."

Henry Green is rightly credited - we can all now agree - as a peerless inventor of dialogue deftly applied. But listen to this authorial pinch of context:

"He seemed to appraise the dark eyes she sported which were warm and yet caught the light like plums dipped in cold water."

And this:

"He slipped inside like an eel into its drain pipe."

Read this masterpiece, which begins with a death and ends with encouragement: "They lived happily after."

Very compelling and suspenseful. Hard to put down. The sT this poor girl was treated but grew to be her own person, made the story amazing.

See recent piece in New Yorker Magazine on this author and this novel specifically - one of the October 2016 issues.
If I could catch up on my New Yorkers, I'd have more time to read Henry Green and others in his league!!!

An accidental treasure. A master novelist who's taken me completely by surprise.

Great book by Danielle! Could not put this one down. From beginning to end, kept me interested. Brought tears to my eyes several times.

I like the story. It was a little used

Been looking for this. I most of her book.

good