AN NYRB CLASSICS ORIGINAL
Elizabeth Taylor is finally beginning to gain the recognition due to her
as one of the best English writers of the postwar period, prized and
praised by Sarah Waters and Hilary Mantel, among others. Inheriting Ivy
Compton-Burnett's uncanny sensitivity to the terrifying undercurrents
that swirl beneath the apparent calm of respectable family life while
showing a deep sympathy of her own for human loneliness, Taylor depicted
dislocation with the unflinching presence of mind of Graham Greene. But
for Taylor, unlike Greene, dislocation began not in distant climes but
right at home. It is in the living room, playroom, and bedroom that
Taylor stages her unforgettable dramas of alienation and impossible
desire.
Taylor's stories, many of which originally appeared in The New Yorker,
are her central achievement. Here are self-improving spinsters and
gossiping girls, war orphans and wallflowers, honeymooners and barmaids,
mistresses and murderers. Margaret Drabble's new selection reveals a
writer whose wide sympathies and restless curiosity are matched by a
steely penetration into the human heart and mind.