With an introduction by Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall.

Originally published in 1956, The Long View is Elizabeth Jane Howard's uncannily authentic portrait of one marriage and one woman. Written with exhilarating wit, it is a gut-wrenching account of the birth and death of a relationship.

In 1950s London, Antonia Fleming faces the prospect of a life lived alone. Her children are now adults; her husband Conrad, a domineering and emotionally complex man, is now a stranger.

As Antonia looks towards her future, the novel steadily moves backwards in time. Tracing Antonia's relationship with Conrad, she comes to its beginning in the 1920s - through years of mistake and motherhood, dreams and war.

One of his secret pleasures was the loading of social dice against himself. He did not seem for one moment to consider the efforts made by kind or sensitive people to even things up: or if such notions ever occurred to him, he would have observed them with detached amusement, and reloaded more dice.

Observant and heartbreaking, The Long View is as extraordinary as it is timeless.

From the bestselling author of The Light Years and Marking Time comes a revealing portrait of a marriage.

About the Author
Elizabeth Jane Howard was the author of fifteen highly acclaimed novels, including the five volumes of The Cazalet Chronicles, as well as After Julius, Falling, Getting It Right, Love All, and Odd Girl Out. The Cazalet Chronicles - The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, Casting Off and All Change - have become established as modern classics and have been adapted for a major BBC television series and for BBC Radio 4. She had one child, Nicola, and married three times - lastly to fellow author Sir Kingsley Amis. In 2000 she was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List, and in 2002 Macmillan published her autobiography, Slipstream. She died, aged ninety, at home in Suffolk on 2 January 2014.

Reviews
Beautifully written and richly perceptive * Daily Telegraph *
When I read The Long View . . . I realized I would never write anything of such subtlety and penetration: there was no point in even hoping to write a novel if this was the standard of excellence -- Andrew Brown * Guardian *
What a beautiful, subtle, endlessly insightful writer. What compassion, what mesmerising detail, what godlike lightness of touch -- Chris Cleave * Guardian *
Her talent seemed so effervescent, so unstoppable, that there was no predicting where it might take her -- Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies



Book Information
ISBN 9781447272243
Author Elizabeth Jane Howard
Format Paperback
Page Count 480
Imprint Picador
Publisher Pan Macmillan
Weight(grams) 328g
Dimensions(mm) 199mm * 131mm * 31mm