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Paperback
Published: 1st October 2008
Paperback
Published: 25th February 2025
Hardback
Published: 27th September 2011
The Tortoise And The Hare
By (Author) Elizabeth Jenkins
Introduction by Hilary Mantel
Little, Brown Book Group
Virago Press Ltd
25th February 2025
23rd January 2025
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
823.914
Paperback
288
Width 126mm, Height 196mm, Spine 20mm
230g
The re-dipping of dishes was a small matter, but the emotional texture of married life is made up of small matters. This one had become invested with a fatal quality.
Imogen, the beautiful and much younger wife of distinguished barrister Evelyn Gresham, is facing the greatest challenge of her married life. Their neighbour Blanche Silcox, competent, middle-aged and tweedy - the very opposite of Imogen - seems to be vying for Evelyn's attention. And to Imogen's increasing disbelief, she may be succeeding. With exquisite elegance and irony, The Tortoise and the Hare reveals that in affairs of the heart, the race is not always won by the swift - or the fair. INTRODUCED BY HILARY MANTEL 'The perfection of its tone and prose is matched by an anguished wit' AMANDA CRAIG, GUARDIAN 'Wonderfully sinister, so enchantingly written and so sad. Everyone should read it' JILLY COOPER 'A subtle and beautiful book . . . Very few authors combine her acute psychological insight with her grace and style' HILARY MANTELAs smooth and seductive as a bowl of cream -- Hilary Mantel * Sunday Times *
The perfection of its tone and prose is matched by an anguished wit -- Amanda Craig * Guardian *
My best book of almost all time is The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins . . . wonderfully sinister, so enchantingly written and so sad. Everyone should read it -- Jilly Cooper
One of my favourite classics. Elegant and ironic, its continuing charm lies in its quirky and enigmatic love story which becomes more beguiling with each re-reading -- Carmen Callil
Deliciously subtle . . . A lost world of tweeds and twin-sets . . . a classic novel of the fifties * Daily Mail *
My best book of almost all time is THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE by Elizabeth Jenkins ... wonderfully sinister, so enchantingly written and so sad. Everyone should read it * Jilly Cooper *
As smooth and seductive as a bowl of cream * Hilary Mantel *
One of my favourite classics. Elegant and ironic, its continuing charm lies in its quirky and enigmatic love story which becomes more beguiling with each re-reading * Carmen Callil *
Deliciously subtle...A lost world of tweeds and twin-sets...a classic novel of the fifties * DAILY MAIL *
Elizabeth Jenkins is the distinguished biographer (of Jane Austen, Lady Caroline Lamb and Elizabeth I). She was also a historian and novelist who was awarded the OBE in 1981. The Tortoise and the Hare, her sixth novel, was first published in 1953, and is generally considered her greatest work of fiction.