A Wreath of Roses

Having spent too long reading little but non-fiction (much of it for review), I turned back to fiction recently, reading A Wreath of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor, recommended and lent to me by my cousin. I had read a few Taylors, including what is surely her masterpiece, Angel, and was happy to discover more. Published in 1949 as Taylor's fourth novel, A Wreath of Roses opens promisingly, with a shocking event (no spoilers) at a sleepy provincial railway station, witnessed by Camilla, a woman on the brink of middle age who has led a quiet, even prim life and is on her way to her annual holiday. All is about to change for Camilla when she meets a conventionally handsome, self-assured man who calls himself Richard Elton. He is exactly the kind of man she is not usually attracted to, and it is soon clear that he is a liar and a fraud – and yet, even when she knows this, she cannot help being drawn into an affair that she sees as her last chance of romance before life closes over her.…