Every Eye

Isobel English, a novelist of the 1950s, wrote three brief books about adultery and damnation admired today by Muriel Spark and Beryl Bainbridge. Every Eye concerns Hattie, a woman not really at home anywhere, least of all among her manipulative family, which has assigned her the role of shabby-genteel London spinster. She has understood little about her existence, and about her strange, aborted love affair with a much older man the central mystery of her life. Now, while in Ibiza with her new young husband, the meaning of her past is becoming clear, its hidden patterns emerging from gray English shadows into the blazing Mediterranean sun. "It is in Ibiza that the story breaks free from its resentments," said Anita Brookner in praise of this remarkable neglected novel, "a lucidly written account of various kinds of confusion ... and a valuable lesson in where to look for freedom."