Description

By (author) von Arnim, Elizabeth

Short /annotation:
*A touching and funny novel about a once-beautiful woman who, approaching her fiftieth birthday, realises she is no longer the belle of the ball.

:

Beauty; beauty. What was the good of beauty, once it was over? It left nothing behind it but acid regrets, and no heart at all to start fresh.”

Approaching the watershed of her fiftieth birthday, Fanny, having long ago divorced Mr Skeffington and dismissed him from her thoughts for many years, is surprised to find herself thinking of him often. While attempting to understand this invasion, she meets, through a series of coincidences and deliberate actions, all those other men whose hearts she broke. But their lives have irrevocably changed and Fanny is no longer the exquisite beauty with whom they were all once enchanted. If she is to survive, Fanny discovers, she must confront a greatly altered perception of her self.
With the delicate piquancy for which she is renowned, Elizabeth von Arnim here reveals the complexities involved in the process of ageing and in re-evaluating self-worth.

Review quote:
A charming mid-life crisis novel, written with … wit and levity. Von Arnim must be one of Virago”s most rewarding Classic finds, as her perception is so accurate and her prose so tight and funny

Review quote:
All the verve of von Arnim at her best

Biographical note:
A greatly admired literary figure of her time, Elizabeth von Arnim was born in 1866 and brought up in England. She spent later years in Switzerland, the French Riviera and America, where she died in 1941.

Promotional headline:
*A touching and funny novel about a once-beautiful woman who, approaching her fiftieth birthday, realises she is no longer the belle of the ball.