The only reason I wanted to read Elizabeth Bowen is because while reading Virginia Woolf’s essays I stumbled upon a review Woolf wrote on one of Bowen’s books. As it happens with these things, I forgot which book that was or why exactly Woolf appreciated it. It was only Elizabeth Bowen’s name which stayed with me. And when I had the opportunity to read The Heat of the Day, Bowen’s wartime London novel, published in 1948, I jumped at it. I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into, and I’m happy about it.

The Heat of the Day pulled me into the haunting world of 1940s London, yet it often lost me in a fog of uncertainty. I didn’t really expect that anything Virginia Woolf might praise would be a walk in the park, but this really went beyond my readerly experience. The biggest challenges were the novel’s fragmented storytelling and cryptical dialogue. The motives and intentions of the characters were hard to piece together, probably mostly because the novel is (also) a spy novel. Reading requires constant attention and patience, and is rewarded by the atmospheric descriptions of London and masterful character studies. Which is exactly why reading it has upped my reading skills.

what the heat of the day is about

Bowen’s novel is set in war-torn London between 1942 and 1944, with a short flashback set in 1940. The story follows Stella Rodney, who finds herself caught in a web of espionage, suspicion, and betrayal. Stella is a widow and single mother to Roderick, who is set to inherit the Ireland estate of Stella’s Cousin Francis. After her cousin’s funeral, Stella is approached by Harrison, a mysterious figure whose intention is to blackmail Stella for romantic favour – if she agrees to this, he will not report on her lover, Robert, for being a fascist spy.

Alongside Stella, two other characters, Louie and Connie, add depth to the novel’s social structure. In contrast to Stella, who is upper-class and lives in Mayfair, the rich area of London, Connie is a lonely working-class woman who drifts through wartime London in search of connection. Her husband, Tom, is away at war and she spends her weekends in parks and bars looking for love relationships. Connie is her friend, flatmate and only confidante. When Louie gets mixed up in a love triangle with Harrison and Stella, her own status is plainly revealed to her. In this story personal and political loyalties are constantly tested.

why the heat of the day is beautiful to read

One thing which kept me motivated to continue reading is the absolutely beautiful descriptions of nature, city and houses. Bowen is amazing at bringing space to life by intermingling space where people spend time with the lives of the people. In the very first chapter of the novel, we meet Connie, who attends an open-air concert in Hyde Park in September 1942. For a second, we forget it’s wartime, and the people in the park seem to have forgotten too. The air is filled with music, which momentarily obscures the larger reality of war. Bowen’s ability to create these immersive pockets of peace in an otherwise fractured world makes her descriptions all the more poignant.

That Sunday, from six o’clock in the evening, it was a Viennese orchestra that played. The season was late for an outdoor concert; already leaves were drifting on to the grass stage – here and there one turned over, crepitating as though in the act of dying, and during the music some more fell.

Another thing which kept me reading was to see if I would win a bet with myself. My bet was that Bowen deliberately leaves gaps when writing the characters, in order to allow the reader herself to do a bit of detective’s work. Clues from the characters’ past are supplied as the story continues, but question marks still remain, mainly about Harrison. Who is he and why is he so obsessed with Stella? The novel thrives on subtle glances and half-spoken dialogues between the two. Their relationship is fraught with ambiguity and Bowen’s restrained prose forces the reader to peer between the lines. As much as the novel allows, that is.

london scenes

The Heat of the Day is an atmospheric London novel, standing next to Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. The difference is of course, that Elizabeth Bowen’s London is wartime London, a place of shadows, where every interaction is tinged with uncertainty. The city is many – a setting, an emotional landscape and a place suspended in time which stands at the root of Stella’s relationship to Robert. The war has altered the rules of love and trust, and their relationship unfolds in a world where nothing is guaranteed. Stella is uncertain about Robert’s spy activities, and Robert doesn’t seem to be much aware of Stella’s Irish heritage. They offer each other refuge and comfort, and the ever-present danger of loss shapes their interactions.

They had met one another, at first not very often, throughout that heady autumn of the first London air raids. Out of mists of morning charred by the smoke from ruins each day rose to a height of unmisty glitter; between the last of sunset and the first note of the siren the darkening glassy tenseness of evening was drawn fine.

The Heat of the Day is certainly no easy read and it’s not for everyone. Bowen challenges us to accept that there are unknowns in life and in the relationships between people and rewards us with fleeting moments of connection in a world dismembered by war. Maybe this is also precisely what makes the novel unforgettable.

This post was inspired by the Literature Cambridge 2024 course on London in Literature. The ideas explored here are indebted to Dr Angela Harris’s insightful lecture on London as the middle of nowhere in The Heat of the Day.