Blindness and betrayal are Elizabeth Taylors great subjects, and in A View of the Harbour she turns her unsparing gaze on the emotional and sexual politics of a seedy seaside town thats been left behind by modernity. Tory, recently divorced, depends more and more on the company of her neighbors Robert, a doctor, and Beth, a busy author of melodramatic novels. Prudence, Robert and Beths daughter, disapproves of the intimacy that has grown between her parents and Tory and the gossip it has awakened in their little community. As the novel proceeds, Taylors view widens to take in a range of characters from bawdy, nosey Mrs. Bracey to a widowed young proprietor of the local waxworks, Lily Wilson to the would-be artist Bertram—while the book as a whole offers a beautifully observed and written examination of the fictions around which we construct our lives and manage our losses.
