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3.0 

The Death of the Heart

By Elizabeth Bowen
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

The Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations.

In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the thirties, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home in London.There she encounters the attractive, carefree cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and her fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal--and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature.

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146 Reviews

3.0
“Boring things happen to boring people and then they all analyze each other in pages and pages of boring conversations. If there's something here, some truth about life or the human experience, it never surfaces, so you can dig it out if you want, but I can't be bothered to because the book is boring.”
“This follows the story of Portia, a teenager in the 1930s who is forced to live with her much older, wealthy step brother. She falls in love for the first time with a man named Eddie, who, as the title would suggest, breaks her heart. This story definitely brings me back to the first time you get your heart broken as a teenager. There’s so many instances where you want to shake Portia and tell her that Eddie ain’t it. I feel like I can’t really connect with these books full of teenaged angst like I used to, so I thought it was overall just ok.”

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