Chapter Three
When we started eating she asked me how I was getting on with the novel of hers that I was reading. I have often found in the past that authors are extraordinarily over-sensitive to criticism. But perhaps I don’t realise how much of themselves they put into their books and how vulnerable this makes them. So with Eva I expressed only a cautious opinion. I knew the book had got mixed reviews. It was an unusual work for her; most of her books had as their heroines youngish professional women, well educated, self-confident, who then embark on more or less disastrous affairs which make them question their lives.
This book was quite different. It was a sort of Victorian gothic romance, rather in the mode of Jane Eyre. A young girl in Victorian London loses her job as a governess
