The Sleeping Beautyby Elizabeth Taylor
Rating: ★★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1953
Genre: fiction
Pages: 226
ReRead?: No
Project: 2025 read my hoard, a century of women
A subtle love story by one of the most accomplished writers of the 20th century
Vinny Tumulty is a quiet, sensible man. When he goes to stay at a seaside town, his task is to comfort a bereaved friend. Vinny is prepared for a solemn few days of tears and consolation. But on the evening of his arrival, he looks out of the window at the sunset and catches sight of a mysterious, romantic figure: a beautiful woman walking by the seashore. Before the week is over Vinny has fallen in love, completely and utterly, for the first time in his middle-aged life. Emily, though, is a sleeping beauty, her secluded life hiding bitter secrets from the past.
This was my third book by Elizabeth Taylor (the mid-century British author, not the movie star) – I’ve previously read Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (March, 2020) and A Game of Hide and Seek (January, 2019). Elizabeth Taylor makes me think of a slightly more acerbic version of Barbara Pym. There is definitely some acid there, but it is carefully masked.
In August, 2020, I noticed that Virago had issued kindle versions of Taylor’s novels, and that they were very reasonably priced. I thought it was probably a sale price, so I bought 7 of them: The Sleeping Beauty, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (I already owned the paperback, but what the heck, the kindle version was less than a cup of coffee), Blaming, A Wreath of Roses, At Mrs. Lippencotes, In a Summer Season and the Collected Short Stories. The prices don’t seem to have gone up since then, but I’m not sorry I grabbed them, and intend to read them all.
I have liked all three of the novels that I have read so far, and would really struggle to rank them. Elizabeth Taylor excels at characterization, and I always feel as if I really know her characters by the time I close the book. I’m rooting for all of them – even the ones that I didn’t really like (well, hello there Isabella), the ones who do stupid shit (good morning, Vinny), but especially the ones who really seem to deserve to find some happiness (Emily, Laurence, how are you?).
Like Barbara Pym, she seems to write very quiet plots, without much in the way of action. In spite of that, though, her books move forward in a compelling way. No one would call an Elizabeth Taylor novel propulsive, but, honestly, that’s one of the things I like most about mid-century women’s fiction. There is some tension in this book, but it’s a quiet sort of tension – no murder, no mayhem, no car chases. Still, the stakes are high, and, by the end, I was fully committed to these characters.