In Certain Circles

by Elizabeth Harrower

Overview

"Magnificently sad and funny...the best skewering of life between the sexes since Mary McCarthy’s The Group."—Boston Globe ('Best Books of 2015')

"Watchful, witty, unillusioned, exultant…There is a note of elegy in all of Harrower’s work, even as the adrenaline flows, and a lyricism reminiscent of F.Scott Fitzgerald at his desperate best."—Times Literary Supplement

"Like a treasure from an unearthed time capsule."—The Wall Street Journal

"I can't recommend this brilliant, austere writer strongly enough . . . Harrower is funny and elegant and devastating."—James Wood, The New Yorker

"Subtle yet wounding, and very much alive."—The Guardian

"Harrower evokes the waste and futility of a decadent class with all the bite and poignancy of F. Scott Fitzgerald."—Eimear McBride, New Statesman

"Harrower can pierce your heart."—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

Zoe Howard is seventeen when her brother, Russell, introduces her to Stephen Quayle. Aloof and harsh, Stephen is unlike anyone she has ever met. His sister, Anna, is shy and thoughtful. Zoe and Russell, Stephen and Anna: they come from different social worlds but the four of them will spend their lives moving in and out of each other's shadow. Set amid the lush gardens and grand stone houses of Sydney Harbour, In Certain Circles is an intense psychological drama about family and love, tyranny and freedom.

Elizabeth Harrower published only four novels in her short but brilliant career. This fifth novel was completed in 1971, but withdrawn from publication at the last minute. The manuscript languished in the National Library of Australia archives for forty years before Michael Heyward of Text Publishing was allowed to read it. He knew immediately that it must be published. In Certain Circles has been lauded internationally, and its publication coincides with a massive resurgence of interest in Harrower's work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781922182968
Publisher:	Text Publishing Company
Publication date:	09/15/2015
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

ELIZABETH HARROWER was born in Sydney in 1928. She lived in Newcastle until her family moved back to Sydney when she was eleven.
In 1951 Harrower travelled to London and began to write. Her first novel, DOWN IN THE CITY, was published there in 1957 and was followed by THE LONG PROSPECT a year later. In 1959 she returned to Sydney, where she worked in radio and then in publishing. Her third novel, THE CATHERINE WHEEL, appeared in 1960.
Harrower published THE WATCH TOWER in 1966. Four years later she finished a new novel, IN CERTAIN CIRCLES, but withdrew it from publication at the last moment, in 1971. It remained unpublished until 2014.
IN CERTAIN CIRCLES is Harrower’s final completed novel, though in the 1970s and 1980s she continued to write short fiction. She is one of the most important postwar Australian writers - admired by many of her contemporaries, including Patrick White and Christina Stead. Her novels are now being acclaimed by a new generation of readers and writers.
Elizabeth Harrower lives in Sydney.

Editorial Reviews

‘Harrower was right about In Certain Circles being well written, but surely wrong to take its superb style for granted, as if mere literary muscle memory…The book belongs with her best work, with The Watch Tower and The Long Prospect…[It] is more explicit than Harrower’s earlier work about ideological tensions between men and women. It is also broader in scope and not as angry—wiser and less hopeless.’ James Wood, New Yorker

‘Like a treasure from an unearthed time capsule…Harrower is one of the great Australian writers of the postwar era...Harrower's fearsome objectivity and her bristling, beautiful prose come from modernist masters like Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth Bowen…Zoe's struggle, her suffering, her hard-earned knowledge are sharp and alive. You feel the book must have been written last week rather than last century.’ Wall St Journal

'With its flavor of Henry James, Harrower's rediscovered story is an odd, brittle yet impressive piece of work that exposes the complex passions beneath a drawing-room-scenario surface.' Kirkus Reviews

‘Harrower’s prose is watchful, witty, unillusioned, exultant. Its healthful vitality – vivid, accurate, alive to irony – is a dashing stand against its subject matter: human perversity, so often squalid, senseless, swallowing all meaning. The reader marvels at its balance, its sinuousness, as each fresh wave hits….There is a note of elegy in all of Harrower’s work, even as the adrenaline flows, and a lyricism reminiscent of F.Scott Fitzgerald at his desperate best.’ Times Literary Supplement

‘Reading In Certain Circles gave me the thrill that only comes from the work of a major novelist.’ The Conversation

‘In Certain Circles is subtle yet wounding, and very much alive.’
Guardian Australia

‘A novel of astonishing psychological insight exploring the darker aspects of human attraction.’ The Saturday Paper

‘A coup…weirdly thrilling line by line…[its] dense and adult conversation crackles with a sense of moral urgency.’The Australian

‘Her insights into the nature of love, the role of women and the torsions of power in even the most ordinary relationship are bitter and sometimes cruel, wielded in the way that acute honesty may be, like a whip. Yet they are always delivered via the honeyed dipper of her prose.’The Monthly

‘An exploration of the psychologies of entitlement and deprivation in the context of love.’ Book of the Week, Adelaide Advertiser

‘This is not a comfortable book. It is tight, intense, concentrated, powerful – almost hypnotic.’ Weekend Press

‘A brilliant exploration of relationships, marriage, thwarted passion and the beauty and the price of love.’ Herald Sun

‘There are many wonderful things in this novel. Harrower’s skill in evoking a place is impressive. Her eye for oddities of behaviour, for quirks of character and for patches of pretentiousness is as sure as ever. The wry intelligence of her view of middle-class Australian life is evident throughout. Her writing is characteristically sharp and pithy. Whatever the reason behind her decision not to allow this novel to be released four decades ago, its rebirth is an event to be celebrated.’ Sydney Morning Herald

‘Exceptional.’ West Australian

From the Publisher

2014-08-25
A previously unpublished novel by an Australian author whose work from the 1950s and '60s has recently found new popularity reveals how a privileged daughter's bright future leads to misery. Harrower (The Watch Tower, 2013, etc.) published four novels more than half a century ago, then withdrew the fifth before its scheduled publication and stopped writing. Available now for the first time, the book returns readers to characteristic Harrower terrain via the finely scrutinized interior lives of two very different pairs of siblings divided by social status, assumptions and, above all, psychologies. Zoe and Russell Howard are the gilded children of notable, well-connected parents living in middle-class comfort in Sydney. A chance meeting on a train introduces Russell to Stephen Quayle and then his sister Anna, whose parents' deaths in a car accident left them under the damaging guardianship of an uncle and his disturbed wife. While Anna seems to have emerged relatively intact, Stephen is angry and judgmental, and beautiful, talented Zoe—"There was something enchanting and winning and touching about her, and she knew it"—is electrified by his difference. Years later, after Zoe has begun a promising career in the film industry in Europe, her mother dies, and returning to Australia, she is reunited with Stephen. Soon they are married, but the honeymoon phase, with Zoe trying to "cure" Stephen of his unhappy past, slowly evolves into something more destructive, as Stephen's mix of tenderness and abuse slowly eats away at her. Formal in tone and cerebral in style, Harrower's novel proceeds in a sequence of snapshot episodes dominated by semiabstract conversations. It takes a late kind of theatrical coup to push the actors out of their frozen roles into a reconfigured future. With its flavor of Henry James, Harrower's rediscovered story is an odd, brittle yet impressive piece of work that exposes the complex passions beneath a drawing-room-scenario surface.

Kirkus Reviews