Evelyn Waugh called her one of the very best novelists of the day - a title she still deserves' Carol Shields
The year is 1920. Clara Batchelor, the heroine of The Lost Traveller, is now an actress with a touring repertory company and is passionately in love with the wholly unsuitable Stephen Tye. When Stephen betrays her, Clara betrays herself by agreeing to marry Archie, the fiance, she discarded four years before. A friendship but not a love match, the marriage is a desperate attempt by Clara to rekindle the safety of childhood. But neither of them are children any more and their dream sugar house begins to dissolve.
The Sugar House is the second in the trilogy sequel to Frost in May, which began with The Lost Traveller and continues in Beyond the Glass. Although each is a complete novel in itself, together they form a brilliant portrait of a young girl's journey to adulthood.
Absorbing, fascinating . . . written with extraordinary brilliance - Elizabeth Bowen
Antonia White evinces Clara's breakdown, particularly the isolation and emptiness she experiences, with extraordinary economy and insight - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Absorbing, fascinating . . . written with extraordinary brilliance - Elizabeth Bowen
Antonia White evinces Clara's breakdown, particularly the isolation and emptiness she experiences, with extraordinary economy and insight - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Antonia White (1899-1980) was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton before going to St Paul's School for Girls and training for the stage at RADA. From 1924 until the Second World War she worked as a journalist. Among numerous volumes of short stories, fiction and autobiography, Antonia White published a celebrated quartet of novels linked by their heroine: Frost in May (1922), The Lost Traveller (1950), The Sugar House (1952) and Beyond the Glass (1954).