A Game of Hide and Seek
 First US edition | |
| Author | Elizabeth Taylor. |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher |
Peter Davies (UK) Alfred A. Knopf (US) |
Publication date | 1951 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
A Game of Hide and Seek is a 1951 novel by Elizabeth Taylor.
A Game of Hide and Seek was published again in 1986 by Virago Press and Penguin Books, with an introduction by Elizabeth Jane Howard.
Plot
The novel is set in England between WWI and WWII and focused on the characters of Harriet Claridge and Vesey Macmillan. The novel explores their relationship, its effect on those around them, as they seek each other's love for more than 25 years.
The story starts in their childhood. Harriet is painfully inarticulate, while Vesey is defensive and irritating; yet they are drawn to one another. When Vesey attends Oxford, they are separated, but she cherishes his photograph and waits for him to write. But he doesn't, so Harriet marries Charles, a rather dull country solicitor, and have a daughter, while Vesey becomes an actor.
Skipping ahead 15 years, nothing has changed greatly. The latter portion of the novel is concerned with the rather pitiful, often lovely, and completely ineffectual affair they embark on. Their intrigue could not possibly be less of a 'grand passion.' When it ends as the reader knows it must, the affair is not completed; it is just forced to stop.
Style
This novel gestures towards Persuasion by Jane Austen, which one of the characters is reading and reflecting on during a scene of suppressed tension. Like the hero and heroine of that novel, the two main characters, who have been childhood sweethearts separated by circumstances, almost get a second chance later in life; however, here one of them is married.