Although still in print, the novelist Elizabeth Taylor seems to be generally overlooked, and perhaps on the brink of being forgotten unless some director is inspired to make a film of one of her books, as was the late Dan Ireland for “Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont” in 2006, establishing this as perhaps her best-known work. Taylor was probably resigned to be eclipsed from the outset by the coincidence of sharing her name with the film star who shot to fame in “National Velvet” in 1944, shortly before the publication of the first of the author’s twelve novels, “At Mrs. Lippincote’s”.

Despite having been described as “her most sex-infused work”, Taylor’s eighth novel, “In a Summer Season”, published in 1961, reminds me of Jane Austen as she might have written if living in the 1930s-1950s. Although the tale switches between arguably too many points of view, Taylor’s heroine is wealthy forty-something Kate Heron, recently widowed after a happy marriage, who has set tongues wagging in the local community by marrying Dermot, handsome and charming, but ten years her junior, and unable to hold down a job.

The main characters are not quite as aristocratic as Austen’s, although some casually count the odd titled friend, and Kate’s former father-in-law, the crusty Sir Alfred, has been knighted for his rags-to-riches success as a factory owner. They tend to fall into two groups: well-heeled and living on unearned income on one hand, on the other, like retired teacher Aunt Ethel, or Kate’s new husband Dermot, ruefully or resentfully aware of being obliged to trade on the good will of richer relatives.

While Austen’s focus is on young women’s attempts to find suitable husbands in the confined world of country houses and the Bath Assembly Rooms, Kate occupies a spacious house with a telescope providing a view of Windsor Castle, a live-in cook, daughter at boarding school and son moodily learning the ropes in the factory he is expected to inherit. The main issue is whether everyone is correct in assuming that her marriage to Dermot is doomed to fail, the question being when and how. Combined with sub-plots, this may all sound too trivial and dated to be worth reading. Yet, as with Austen, what raises this novel above unendurable banality is Taylor’s skill in combining comedy, acerbic wit and poignancy, although her acute observations are expressed through the thoughts and dialogues of her characters rather than the explanations of an older-style, sometimes intrusive narrator.

Another difference is that Taylor is more experimental in deliberately playing down plot narration , preferring to focus on particular scenes. So it is that, for instance, the two major events in the plot are only referred to, or inferred – in fact never fully explained – after they occur. Instead, the detail lies in apparently minor scenes, like Kate’s visits to the hairdresser “Elbaire”, the uncharitable atmosphere at the sorting of clothes for the village church jumble sale, or the accepted ritual of “seeing off” the children at Waterloo Station for the autumn term return to boarding school, with the firmly repressed fleeting doubts as to the justification for sending one’s offspring away in this fashion.

From this approach, we learn a good deal about the characters’ thoughts, the degree of self-delusion, and their views on each other – generally, they are more clear-sighted about the latter than themselves. Taylor also conveys the behaviour and outlook of people living in the 1950s very vividly, although she confines herself to a narrow and privileged section of society. Of course, the world has changed so much since then, that it may be difficult for readers under say forty to feel engaged.

I am particularly intrigued by the fact that this book was published in 1961 at a time of sea change, when the author could have gone either way between a “genteel” novel which formed a natural progression on from Jane Austen, and the “kitchen sink realism” of working class drama, with the abandonment of conventions. Elizabeth Taylor chose to “play safe” and stay “in line” with writers like Barbara Pym, rather than join the ranks of the “ground-breaking” works like John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger” (1956), Shelagh Delaney’s “A Taste of Honey”, or Lynne Reid Banks’ “The L-shaped Room” (1960). Admittedly, the acute sexual desire which is what attracts Kate to Dermot is described, but she remains essentially conformist, expecting to live as an appendage to a husband, accommodating his wants, rather than seeking independent self-fulfilment. The only somewhat caricatured “modern” touch is provided by Araminta, a neighbour’s uninhibited daughter who is training to be a model in London.

Although she lived into the 1970s, perhaps “The Swinging Sixties”, the pill and certainly the Sexual Discrimination Act, to name a few changes, came a little too late for Taylor to make the adjustment to an edgier style. However, it seems that in fact she was quietly radical in her thinking. It comes as a surprise to learn that, as a young woman, she belonged to the Communist Party, and she remained an atheist and a Labour voter in later life. So, it must have been a conscious choice to omit any evidence of this from the novel, apart from Kate’s atheism which did not prevent her from making wedding “vows before the God she does not believe in, without the slightest hesitation”, to quote Aunt Ethel.

It is a fair observation that a psychological study of privileged people can be as moving and insightful as one about those struggling in poverty, and Taylor does not shy away from displaying a capacity for ruthlessness when it comes to achieving her chosen (if somewhat abrupt and contrived) ending.

What is certain is that, if alive today, Elizabeth Taylor could have written some gripping soap operas.

Set in C19 rural Ireland and America, this is the tale of Coyle, a poor, uneducated man who does not baulk at acts of violence when faced with injustice, or the need to survive, but is also gentle in his love for his wife and his little daughter. After accidentally causing the death of the landowner’s malicious son Hamilton, responsible for serving him notice to quit for no apparent reason, Coyle is forced to go on the run, with the foreman Faller and a couple of henchman in hot pursuit. It is unclear why Faller has such an implacable desire to avenge the death of such an unworthy character, nor what may have moulded the wily, vindictive +Faller into a personification of evil. So as Coyle endures the rigour of an Atlantic crossing, and the hardships of life in a gang of exploited Irish immigrants constructing an American railroad, based on real events at “Duffy’s Cut” in 1832, we know that the two men’s paths will ultimately cross again.

What may sound like a familiar, even hackneyed plot, is transformed by the power of Paul Lynch’s prose, remarkable in its original and lyrical stream of consciousness. Like poetry, almost every paragraph repays reading twice or more to absorb and reflect upon it. This often runs counter to the urge to turn the page not only to discover how events will turn out, but perhaps also to escape exposure to their too frequent gratuitous violence and bleakness. The latter are sometimes eased by gentle moments, when Coyle recalls his wife, or fingers the ribbon which is his only keepsake of his daughter. Yet overall, the acute observations and insights tend to be overwhelmed by scenes of brutality or acute suffering.

Quotations out of context are unlikely to do justice the writing, but here are brief descriptions of a storm and its aftermath.

“The world that was all sky was leaded and sinking fast and the sun was nowhere to be seen. Around noon came the sound that many dreaded, the snapping shut of the hatches and the ventilators to keep watertight the boat, the scuffle of tarpaulin on the deck and the dull thud of the pitched weights. Nothing to suck on now but the air tombed beneath.

The master watched the sky swirl and he bellowed commands in a broad voice that was torn up and scattered by the wind. The ship scudded headlong into the squall. Mountains rose out of the sea, reached up towards the sky as if it wanted to take the smudged remnants of the heavens into its quickening mouth, a sea of jagged teeth.”…………………………………….

……………………………………. “They emerged red-eyed and silent into the rinsed air, their clothes ragged and their bodies bent and their faces creased with dirt. They stared in disbelief at the great waters silent, smoothed with a benevolent repose, and they looked with distrust toward the sun that glittered warmly in the pale blue sky, moved awkward through its gift of pure air.”

These words evoke vivid images and authentic emotions, drawing on the author’s experience as a film critic.

Although I have yet to read “Prophet Song”, Paul Lynch seems to be a worthy winner of the Booker Prize for a quality of writing fed by his copious reading since early childhood, and very much in the vein of Cormac McCarthy, but with his own twist, the articulacy and skilful way with words found in so many Irish writers. “Red Sky at Morning” contains these ingredients, although being his first published novel, it may not be the best. Perhaps at times, the verbal pyrotechnics are a little too contrived, but this may be inevitable if a writer is prepared to take risks, pushing the limits of what words can convey.

It’s interesting to compare his style with that of Graham Greene, who aimed to achieve in his writing “a kind of verbal transparency which refuses to allow language to become a character in its own right” – hence the sentences which have been described as “lean and lucid”. In “Red Sky at Morning”, the words seem almost an end in themselves. The conclusion to be drawn seems to be simply, as Coyle’s wife reluctantly observes, that “all you can do in this life is to learn to accept loss”. Combined with the ambiguous, incongruously upbeat “Epilogue”, this left me dissatisfied. In view of the current state of the world, perhaps the author is justified in what he himself has called his “tragic world view”, but while having huge admiration for his talent, this is hard to take in large doses.

A talented illustrator of children’s stories, the improbably named Halcyon aka Hassie Days finds that contracts have dried up following her decision to focus on caring for her dying father.  Together with her sister Margot, she agrees to share their joint inheritance from him on the purchase of a neglected old house in the Shropshire village of Hope Wenlock.  This is clearly not a good idea since the two have continued their childhood bickering into adult life, and have very different personalities and aspirations, Margot being smart, materialistic and employed in some form of high finance.  It gradually becomes apparent that Hassie is going through a mid-life crisis, triggered by a recent love affair.

At first, I was hooked by Hassie’s wry humour, and insightful observation of varied local characters, or Margot’s friends, despite the apparent inability to manage her own life. The influences which have made the two sisters so different are intriguing.  The descriptions of the scenery around Wenlock edge, and the garden which Hassie transforms with the help of the resourceful Albanian Murat, who may be lying low for reasons connected with immigration, are very vivid and compelling.

However, the last five chapters proved a growing disappointment: “So many things happened in quick succession around this time that I may have got the sequence confused”. I am inclined to speculate with other reviewers as to whether the author was pressed for time to finish, or even struggling to find a happy ending that would not seem too trite.  While some loose ends or last minute crises are tied up too neatly, other threads are brought to the fore without being adequately woven into the tale.  For instance, the accounts of the C7 abbess, St.Milburga, are rather tedious information dumps. As she reads the journals of Nelly East, the former occupant of the house who was so repressed by her husband, Hassie’s affinity with her seems too sudden and undeveloped. Several incidents appeared implausible, too rushed, or both.  Murat remains a two-dimensional character to a frustrating degree.

I could appreciate the process by which Hassie might come to terms with fate, develop a sense of proportion and renewed purpose in life. However, the hint of magic realism, “away with the fairies”, was a step too far.

It is an achievement to concoct the diary of a man from fifteen-year-old schoolboy in the early 1920s to death six decades later aged 85. It must have involved a good deal of research to select the series of C20 events to form the backdrop, and the book is possibly more appealing to readers of retirement age who can recall or have heard a lot about them in the past.

Logan Mountstuart has a comfortable childhood since his father is manager of a meat company, producing corned beef in Uruguay. On his return to England, a master at his minor public school who has taken a fancy to him steers Logan into an Oxford College from which he emerges with a third class degree, which matters not since his ambition is to become a writer. He has modest success in getting published quite quickly, but feels trapped after making the mistake of marrying an earl’s shallow daughter, on the rebound from rejection by a more intriguing woman. And so he embarks on a chequered life, where in the attempt to make the journal more interesting, his imaginary acquaintances mix with a succession of the rich and famous, movers and shakers, the likes of Hemingway, Picasso, Ian Fleming, even the Duke of Windsor and Wallace Simpson. All of these seem taken with Logan, at least initially. Then there is the US painter Nat Tate, whom some critics have been fooled into thinking actually existed.

However, all the name-dropping quickly becomes tiresome, and I suspect the book may appeal more to men, since it is written very much from a male perspective. William Boyd has explained that Logan was inspired by the journals dating from the 1920s of writer and critic Cyril Connolly, whom he describes as “selfish, promiscuous, talented, hard up, lazy, an epicurean and a particular kind of English intellectual (his tastes were refined but narrow), and I found something about his flawed personality deeply beguiling”. As a female reader, I do not.

Particularly in early life, Logan is not a very likeable character. He can’t resist sleeping with his best friend’s fiancée, he drinks far too much, and lusts after countless women, most of whom conveniently seem to find him attractive. Yet he has odd flashes of integrity, as when he refuses to plant incriminating evidence on a man whom the Duke of Windsor wants “out of the way”, and so years later still bears a grudge against him – Wallace hissing the word “traitor” at a chance meeting.

Logan is at his best in times of adversity. When unjustly imprisoned in Switzerland, which at least ensures he survives World War ll, he distracts himself with a small farm of insects found in his room – woodlice, a cockroach and ants which he “herds together in a small packet” but they keep escaping, which gives him “a vicarious sense of freedom”. Sometimes he is so impoverished that he has to live on tins of dog food, for which he develops a taste, but always lands on his feet. His home may be sold because he is believed dead, but in another stage of life someone will bequeath him a house, admittedly in a rundown state.

He may have to flee the US since he is suspected of underage sex with a girl he didn’t realise was only sixteen, but ends up with a cushy teaching post in Nigeria, where he has a chance to show his decency in trying to free a servant who has been pressganged into an army during the Biafran war. Boyd’s own childhood experience of living in Nigeria may have contributed to this section’s authentic ring.

There is wry, even black humour, in the scenes when, especially in old age, he decides it is not too late to take up a cause like joining a Socialist Patients’ Collective, after experiencing the shortcomings of the NHS, or finding out who is defacing a plaque to a hero of the Resistance in the French village where he has taken up residence – this altruism invariably backfires.

The disadvantages of the diary format is that the entries are often quite short and fragmented. There are too many banal sections, involving lists and humdrum events: how many made to measure summer suits Logan bought, just how much he boozed one night, how he furnished his flat. This may be realistic in terms of what a diary is like, but is pretty tedious. While skimming through the duller patches, it is easy to overlook the names and professions of people in passing, so that when they turn up again three hundred pages later one cannot be bothered to check who they are.

What often feels inevitably unstructured, because it is representing the course of life, and also unbearably long – I felt better disposed to it as my Kindle recorded 80 per cent read – is actually full of many imaginative incidents which could have been developed more fully, and some expressive pieces of writing which one would not normally find in a diary. In other words, would a series of short stories on particular events in the stages of Logan’s life had been more satisfying? Still, this book was longlisted for the 2002 Booker Prize, has been adapted for a television series, and has sold well, so who am I to carp?

“The wind is high and hoarse in the trees, tearing fretfully though the high boughs…..A big loose hound whose coat is littered with the shadows of the trees lets out a few rough, half-hearted barks…..The presence of a black and white cat moves on the window ledge.” This spare, poetical prose sometimes sounds incongruous, too mature in the thoughts of the young girl narrating this story, unusually observant as she is. But does this really matter? Recounted in the present tense to give a sense of immediacy, this is one of those simple tales which hang on the subtle way in which the facts are revealed.

In the rural Wexford of southeast Ireland during the early 1980s (as we glean from references to the IRA hunger strike in the Maze Prison), a girl – whose name we are never told – is fostered with a farming couple, the Kinsellas, to ease the burden on her heavily pregnant mother. Home life sounds chaotic, since her mother already has to care for at least four children, and do more than her fair share of running the farm, with a husband who clearly drinks away what money there is, leaving too little to pay for the hay to be cut, gambles away a red Shorthorn cow, and casually accepts handouts of potatoes, rhubarb and “the odd bob” sent to his wife. His callousness is revealed when he forgets to unload the girl’s luggage as he drives away, but never seems to make any move to remedy his error.

The Kinsellas could not be more different. Working hard in quiet cooperation, they are keeping at bay a suppressed grief which the girl only discovers after some weeks, from a neighbour’s gossip. Yet although the girl’s presence can only enhance their sense of loss, they still give her the care and attention which she has lacked, so that she blossoms and develops in the space of a few weeks. Suddenly, it becomes clear, as it would to a child with little sense of time passing over a long summer holiday, that the school year is about to start, her mother has given birth and she must return to her old life. The sense of belonging and the affection which have grown make the parting all the harder, on both sides. As is the case with Claire Keegan’s novellas, the ending is ambiguous, leaving the reader to reflect on what happens next. Yet it seems that the girl has gained some permanent benefit from the experience, as perhaps the Kinsellas have as well.

Much of the emotion in this book is implied, together with the way in which observations are used to reveal the characters’ lives and the rural setting, laced with the Irish turn of phrase in the dialogues. As John Kinsella observes, “You don’t have to say anything. Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s a man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing”.

This novella has been made into the film “The Quiet Girl” which has also been highly praised.

Following the vacuum created by Cromwell’s death, encouraging the restoration of the monarchy in England, the “Act of Oblivion” issued a general pardon, with a few exceptions including the “regicides” who had signed Charles l’s death warrant.  Robert Harris makes two of these real men the central characters of his novel: Ned Whalley, turned loyal soldier prepared to be ruthless in the loyal support of his cousin Cromwell, and Ned’s son-in-law Will Goffe, a devout Puritan with a passion for preaching  and a streak of fanaticism, as indicated in his unshakeable belief that the Second Coming will take place in the year 1666, as foretold in the Book of Revelation. This delusion at least makes their trials more bearable, as they endure a precarious existence on the run in the New World, with their nemesis, the fictional but plausible Richard Nayler, in unrelenting pursuit long after others have lost the taste for it, driven less by his desire to avenge the king’s execution,  than by a deep personal grudge.

The author succeeds in maintaining a continuous sense of tension and menace, so that right to the end, one is unsure whether Whalley and Goffe will escape capture, let alone survive. If the narrative sometimes lacks pace, this perhaps serves to remind us  of the inevitable tedium of being forced to lie low, often in very uncomfortable conditions, always on the alert and rarely certain of whom one can trust.

Robert Harris never misses the chance to reveal characters’ strengths and flaws, so that, wherever one’s sympathies lie in the first place, they tend to keep shifting. We see how, when they were in a position of power serving a triumphant Cromwell,  the essentially decent Whalley and Goffe were capable of being as cruel as Nayler, who in turn sometimes has unexpected flashes of compassion.  Writing a memoir to pass the time, Whalley comes to question some of Cromwell’s motives and actions, while Goffe seems rigidly set in his religious certainties. While perhaps King Charles ll and his brother James are portrayed as unremittingly debauched to the point of caricature,  even they appear worthy as they trot round London on horseback, reassuring people in the aftermath of the Great Fire.

Having dragged somewhat in places, the narrative passes too rapidly through the events of the Plague and Great Fire of London which test the faith of Will’s long-suffering wife Frances. The unpredictable, nail-biting end is also quite abrupt. Yet overall, this novel is well-constructed, wears the detailed research on which it is based quite lightly, and certainly stimulates interest in a fascinating period of our history, which could have turned out very differently. It also raises the moral dilemma of how far to go in following one’s principles, at the price of losing almost everything else which one loves or enjoys.