Eva, who believes herself to be older than her guardians give her credit, decides it's time to set off on her own. Selling her Jaguar, she takes the money and runs, leaving a path even the worst detective would be able to follow.

Het valt niet te ontkennen dat dit een bijzonder boek is. Het hoofdpersonage wordt in andere Goodreads reviews vaak omschreven als "enigmatic" en dat is het helemaal. Maar niet alleen het hoofdpersonage is moeilijk te begrijpen, ook op de andere personages krijg je geen vat. Als lezer heb je voortdurend het gevoel dat je buiten de actie staat, dat je niet weet wat er in godsnaam gaande is, al wordt het meeste uiteindelijk wel (vaak op indirecte manier) verklaard. Hoewel het boek erg goed geschreven is, had ik hierdoor wel wat moeite om erdoor te geraken.
Maar de beloning komt uiteindelijk wel, met dat einde dat inslaat als een bom. Damn.

I enjoyed most of the story of Eva Trout while I was reading it, but kept having the feeling that I was missing something important that would have allowed me to have a better understanding of the plot and characters. I’ve read through a lot of reviews now, and it seems I was not alone in this feeling. For about the last third of the book, I did have a certain sense of foreboding and I found the last section more gripping because of that feeling. Eva was an interesting character who did unusual things considering the mores of the time period. Bowen left me wondering what her true motivations for her actions were and particularly what really happened during the lead up to the ending. I couldn’t tell whether it was Eva who was responsible for the sequence of events or whether her former teacher, Iseult, actually orchestrated the events that led to the unusual conclusion. The writing was excellent, and I plan to read more of Bowen in the near future.

This novel centers around a young orphaned heiress, Eva Trout, with a problematic family life behind her – vanished mother, gay father. She is disconnected from everyone around her, and all the other major characters seem disconnected too. They include a former teacher, a guardian, and the deaf-mute boy that Eva adopts. During the second half of the book, when Eva falls in love, she is somewhat more accessible.

The writing is by turns irritating and brilliant. The plot is vague, and full of odd turns. The dialogue tends towards the enigmatic, although it’s clear that there are lots of subtle yearnings and rejections going on beneath. There are pages of rather dull letters between the characters, which could have been omitted entirely. Where Bowen excels, though, is in description.

Here are some quotes that will illustrate Bowen’s gift with language:
“Lancing its way through Paris, the steel-bright Seine magnetized leaners over its parapets.”
“Enticing with coffee, the morning was pearly with promise of noon heat.”
“Day, a dying yellow suffusion, was at its last. Some new element entered Eva’s silence.”
“Such was the shadowlessness of the church that it became the more onerous to brings sins here, even to lay them down.”

I was flabbergasted by how much this book delighted me. I read a bunch of Bowen novels like over a decade ago and found them wildly unintelligible — and while I saw that in this book, I for the most part found that if I was patient and let things unfold and didn't prod too hard, I followed along well enough (to at least get the gist). Is this book different from her others or have I just changed? I will revisit.
I laughed out loud in the first pages, and many times following. So darkly absurd and comical and vivid and ironic. Such cleverly drawn characters. Just... brilliantly done? Loved the prose so much.