Marking Time

By Elizabeth Jane Howard

Book Overview

The "charming, poignant, and quite irresistible" (The Times, London) second novel in the Cazalet Chronicles shows "how small realities shape our lives while we are waiting for the big things to happen" (The Washington Post) as we return to Britain in September of 1939, and a new generation of Cazalets take up the family's story as World War II breaks out.

Sixteen-year-old Louise, Edward and Villy's daughter, is beginning to move out into the world. At cooking school, she meets clever, vivacious Stella Rose, and her flashy family; at a London house party, she charms Michael Hadleigh, a famous portrait painter and notorious ladies' man. And at a squalid local drama school, she experiences a fascinating casualness towards language and sex that would shock her parents as much as their secret lives would shock her...

For Polly, now fourteen, the terrors of war cannot forestall the pangs of adolescence, from a growing affection for Louise's troubled cousin Christopher, to an increased awareness of her parents, Sybil and Hugh, and their constant charade, even in matters of life and death...

Fourteen-year-old Clary is hardest hit by the war: her father, Rupert, has been reported missing after the harrowing retreat at Dunkirk. While the rest of the family, even Rupert's wife Zoe, gradually accepts that must be dead, Clary steadfastly clings to the belief that he is alive, creating elaborate scenarios to explain his continued absence...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671527940
• ISBN13: 9780671527945
• Release Date: July 1995
• Publisher: Atria Books
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.87 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.3" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

cazalet chronicles

Fantastic book - re-reading and it's even more enjoyable. All that Elizabeth Jane Howard writes is superb. Cant wait to start the next one.

Memorable Characters Make This A Wonderful Novel

The engrossing tale of the Cazalet family begun in "The Light Years" continues in this equally irresistible second volume of the series. War has broken out in Europe, Hitler has marched into Poland, and the extended family all gathers at the home in Sussex safe from the nightly air raids in London. This second volume, while encompassing the entire family and its related branches, focuses primarily on Louise, Polly, and Clary---three young girls growing into womanhood in a time when everything is frozen, in a time that Polly describes as "the present seemed gray; the future black."Although they may only be "marking time" and waiting for peacetime to let their lives resume, the normal course of daily events makes this a poignant novel to curl up with. One brother is missing in action and presumed dead, one brother faces the possibility of losing his wife to a terminal illness, one brother persists in his extra-marital dalliances and sexual abuse of his own daughter, and the sister continues her clandestine love affair. Babies are born, alliances are formed, and love looms on the horizon. Into this family comes a virtual stranger, Archie Lestrange, a longago friend of Rupert and Isobel's. His kindness, level-headedness, and good nature bring hope to the Cazalets and dreams of love to one of them. At the close of the book, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor and everyone settles in for a long and bitter war. Prepare yourself for a cliffhanger on the final page that will have you scurrying to order Volume 3 "Confusion."