LOVE FOR LYDIA

by H.E. Bates ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 1952

The mist of nostalgia here- and a certain latter day-disenchantment for a return to a lost youth, and a first love for Lydia, whose capricious charms were to destroy as well as affect in a fickle, facile pursuit. Richardson tells the story in the first person, of Aspen House, its high elms and clovered fields and fading elegance, to which Lydia at nineteen and where he fell in love with her. But Lydia, after the fever of a first affair with Richardson, turned to others- Alex and Tom Holland and Blackie Johnson- all responsive to her wayward grace. Death shadows the progression here; Alex drowns; Holland dies after a shooting accident; and Lydia, in a spiral of guilt and indulgence, ends in a tubercular sanitarium where Richardson finds her- two years later. And although Blackie Johnson still offers her his awkward, inarticulate devotion, it is to Richardson she turns- for the love he can no longer offer freely... A moment in time- and feeling, recaptured with a poignant detachment and regret, with however- none of the external drama of earlier novels.

Pub Date: Jan. 15, 1952

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown-A.M.P.

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1952

Categories: FICTION