Love by Elizabeth von Arnim

I've been meaning to read more by Elizabeth von Arnim for years, since I read and loved The Enchanted April ages ago. At first, I really didn't like this book, but I wound up getting really into it about 50 pages in. It has a disconcertingly wide range of tone, style and mood, from Austen-esque comedy of manners to modernist explorations of sexuality. It's one of the few books I've read that manages to be both genuinely hilarious and absolutely heartrending by turns. The central plot involves a love affair and eventual marriage between a young man, Christopher, and a much older woman, Catherine. But then there's Catherine's daughter, Virginia, and her husband, Stephen, who have literally thrust Catherine out of her old house, and she is so uncomplaining that at first the delicate irony with which the situation is described is completely undetectable. The emergence and development of that irony was probably my favourite part, because I didn't even realise it was supposed to be funny until it just was. The style is very elegant throughout, and by the end it mounts to a really devastating emotional intensity. It's also a book that seems very relevant today, tackling the topics of women aging, use of makeup, and negative stereotypes surrounding certain relationships (older man with a much younger wife being fine, but an older woman with a younger partner being frowned upon or ridiculed). It calls attention to the way society treats the sexuality of older women (and women in general as well, for that matter), which is still an extremely problematic topic. I wound up really liking it, and think it's an outstanding and powerful book, which deserves to be read by more people.