Rose Macaulay - Böcker

"'Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return to High Mass.' Thus starts, with one of the most famous opening lines in modern English literature, Rose Macaulay's classic novel, The Towers of Trebizond.As wise, civilised and wholly entertaining as it was when first published in 1956, the novel tells the beautifully absurd story of the inimitable Aunt Dot, her niece Laurie and Father Chantry-Pigg – and of their expedition together to Turkey to explore the possibility of establishing a High Anglican mission there. Each member of the party has an additional extra-curricular motivation for making the trip: Father Chantry-Pigg wishes to meet the fanatics in residence at the top of Mount Ararat; Aunt Dot is set on the emancipation of Turkish women through wider use of the bathing hat; Laurie's object ispure pleasure …

It is 1946 and the people of France and England are facing the aftermath of the war. Banished by her beautiful, indolent mother to England, Barbary Deniston is thrown into the care of her distinguished father and conventional stepmother. Having grown up in the sunshine of Provence, allowed to run wild with the Maquis, experienced collaboration, betrayal and death, Barbary finds it hard to adjust to the drab austerity of postwar London life.Confused and unhappy, she discovers one day the flowering wastes around St Paul's. Here, in the bombed heart of London, she finds an echo of the wilderness of Provence and is forced to confront the wilderness within herself.

Denham Dobie has been brought up in Andorra by her father, a retired clergyman. On his death, she is snatched from this reclusive life and thrown into the social whirl of London by her sophisticated relatives. Denham, however, provides a candid response to the niceties of 'civilised' behaviour. CREWE TRAIN is one of Macaulay's wittiest satires. The reactions of Denham to the manners and modes of the highbrow circle in which she finds herself provide a devastating - and very funny - social commentary as well as a moving story.This bitingly funny, elegantly written comedy of manners is as absorbing and entertaining today as on the book's first publication in 1967.

Rose Macaulay takes a lively and perceptive look at three generations of women within the same family and the 'dangers' faced at each of those stages in life. The book opens with Neville celebrating her 43rd birthday and contemplating middle age now that her children are grown. Her mother, in her sixties, seeks answers to her melancholy in Freudianism. Her sister, Nan, 33, a writer who has hitherto led a single and carefree life in London, experiences the loss of love and with it her plan for the future. And Neville's principled daughter Gerda, who is determined not to follow her mother's generation into the institute of marriage, finds herself at an impasse with the man she loves.

'Oh God, one should not go to parties, Daisy sighed, sinking in wan defeat in the melancholy dawn. One should not mingle with others; one should keep oneself to oneself...'Lying awake after a hotel party on holiday in the Mediterranean, Daisy Simpson reflects on her lacklustre social performance and muses on the impression her confident and graceful half-sister Daphne may have made on the other guests. What is it that makes Daphne, Daphne and Daisy, Daisy? And which of the two will attract the attentions of one of their hosts, Raymond, whom they have both fallen for? Returning to London, Daisy's life is strained by the efforts of presenting the right elements of her personality to the right people, resulting in embarrassments, difficulties and deceits as she navigates her relationships and social standing. Rose Macaulay's novel, first published in 1928, offers a sharp and witty commentary on how we twist our identities to fit, delivered in an intelligent and innovative style.