The intrepid Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and private investigator, is walking through London on Christmas Eve, 1931, when a man she believes to be a shell-shocked veteran of World War I suddenly blows himself up, injuring Maisie and several other bystanders. Another anonymous (and mentally ill) veteran observes the suicide, and shortly afterward issues a threat, telling the authorities that he will “demonstrate [his] power,” if the government does not alleviate the suffering of war veterans within forty-eight hours. Maisie herself has served in the Great War as a nurse, and she has always been particularly sympathetic to the plight of these unfortunate, mentally ill veterans. Maisie’s investigation takes her into the dark world of insane asylums, those who run them, the treatments they provide, and their chances for success, at the same time that the author also depicts the political and social unrest in the aftermath of the war.
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Danielstown, the Irish estate belonging to Sir Richard and Lady Naylor, is the closed environment which allows Elizabeth Bowen to explore the Anglo-Irish lifestyle, values, and allegiances in 1921, a time when The Troubles are about to sweep the country and change it forever. The Naylors’ niece Lois is nineteen, a bored young woman without goals, impatient to get on with the job of finding a husband so that she can fulfill her apparent destiny. Her cousin Laurence, an Oxford student who would rather be in Italy or France, is bored and has little to do. As outright rebellion by the Irish populace draws closer, one guest at a garden party comments that it would be “the greatest pity if we were to become a republic and all these lovely [British] troops taken away.” Bowen’s book has the ring of truth. She herself was part of the Ango-Irish tradition in County Cork, and she wrote the book in 1929, when the revolution was still fresh.
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Set primarily in Harlem in 1926, when jazz was bursting forth from the traditions of gospel and blues, this 1992 novel is one of Morrison’s most experimental and least accessible. Written from multiple points of view, it uses the patterns of jazz itself for its structure. A series of overarching themes connects the work, but these are seen in individual characterizations and episodes which flash backward and forward, twisting and turning as they connect, misconnect, change, and ultimately create a unique world larger than the sum of its individual parts. Focusing primarily on middle-aged Violet Trace, her fifty-year-old husband Joseph, and Dorcas Manfred, his teenage lover, whom he believes shares his passion, Morrison explores issues of love and fear, sex and obsession, violence and passivity, and strength and dependence, in addition to her big issues of color and gender.
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Written in 1920 and often regarded as D. H. Lawrence’s greatest novel, Women in Love is the complex story of two women and two men who scrutinize their lives and personal needs in an effort to discover something that makes the future worth living. The personal and social traumas of post-World War I, combined with the rise of industry and urbanization, have affected all four main characters, often at cross purposes as they explore love and its role in their lives. Intensely introspective and self-conscious, each character shares his/her thoughts with the reader, allowing the reader to participate in the inner conflicts and crises that each faces.
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In David Lean’s last film, his adaptation of the 1924 novel by E. M. Forster, he abandons Forster’s strong moral and political stand on the damaging effects of colonialism in India, in favor of a wider ranging, panoramic love story. Although the novel centers on the friendship between the charming and sociable Dr. Aziz (Victor Banerjee) and Briton Richard Fielding (James Fox), one of the few British functionaries who appreciates the Indians as people, Lean focuses instead on Adela Quested’s search for adventure, and maybe, love. Though the film is lushly photographed in many exotic locations, Lean’s changes to the novel’s plot and themes leave the film without an emotional center. More than an hour elapses before the main action begins in this 163-minute film, and there is not enough character development to illustrate Forster’s strong political stand. Nominated for eleven Academy Awards, including Best Actress (Davis), Cinematography (Ernest Day), Direction (Lean), and Best Picture, this pretty film secured only two Oscars–Best Supporting Actress for Dame Peggy Ashcroft, as Mrs. Moore, and Best Original Score by Maurice Jarre.
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