'There was no one in the room. Blinds and curtains were closed; the
light of the skies, if any, was shut out. ... Only the fire was alive,
consuming its life--for what? Then the door opened and as Claudia came
with hurried steps into the fire's glow, two open letters in her hand,
the telephone began ringing. She shut the door and turned up the
lights.'
Claudia Heseltine returns to this moment three times in a series of
parallel narratives. As the novel presses the re-set button, she accepts
each invitation, one by telephone, two by letter, to a specific social
event, and in doing so her life goes down a different path with its own
possibilities and achievements, sorrows, and disappointments. This is an
inventive novel, published in 1931, which contemplates the consequences
of a single decision.
Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century
women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the
best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism,
popular appeal, and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise and
inform.