A beautifully cold domestic novel about marriage, rivalry, self-deception and slowly getting replaced.

Imogen Gresham is elegant, devoted and apparently secure in her life with her barrister husband Evelyn, until the formidable Blanche Silcox begins to draw him away with a kind of blunt, practical force that Imogen cannot quite understand or combat. The title is perfect: this is a novel about speed, patience, vanity, strategy, and when social cleverness proves useless against someone simply more determined.

Originally published in 1954, it has the surface manners of mid-century English domestic fiction, but underneath it is much stranger and more ruthless: a study of emotional dispossession, female rivalry, class, marriage, and the cruelty of politeness. Hilary Mantel’s introduction is a good signal here — this is not cosy Virago rediscovery, but a sharp, psychologically exact novel about the ways a woman can lose ground almost before she knows she is standing on it. Good for readers of Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Taylor, Penelope Mortimer, Anita Brookner, Rosamond Lehmann, and mid-century novels where the drawing room is basically a battlefield.

Virago Press hardback edition, published in Great Britain in 2011. Good second-hand condition, with light handling/shelfwear to boards/corners.