The Echoing Grove

Two sisters fall in love with the same man in this World War II-era novel drawn from Rosamond Lehmann's experience with an ill-fated affair of her own

Rickie Masters is married to Madeleine, who is sitting out the war in the country with their children. Their domestic serenity is shattered when Rickie falls in love with Madeleine's sister, Dinah, and they begin a clandestine, guilt-ridden affair. When Madeleine discovers their infidelity, accusations are hurled and hard choices are made. Then, a year before the war officially ends, tragedy strikes, and it is only after an estrangement of fifteen years that Madeleine and Dinah will begin to struggle toward some kind of reconciliation.

Shifting between the three characters' viewpoints, and shuttling seamlessly between past and present, The Echoing Grove is a story of life: messy, unpredictable, and unstoppable. It is about family, the things that hold us accountable, the events that lead to life-altering decisions, and the emotions that make us human. And above all it is about love: romantic love, married love, familial love, and illicit love. The heart wants what it wants, regardless of the cost.

"Lehmann has always written brilliantly of women in love." -Margaret Drabble

"A novelist in the grand tradition . . . The first writer to filter her stories through a woman's feelings and perceptions." -Anita Brookner

"[Lehmann] is immensely readable, acute, passionate, funny and original." -Elizabeth Jane Howard

"[Lehmann] makes a mood, an atmosphere, which is only hers, and is never forgotten. . . . The inner voice of women talking to themselves about their love affairs, knowing that it's hopeless, having to go ahead anyway, expecting the end as soon as it begins. That, of course, is what Rosamond Lehmann does best." -TheSunday Times

"This novel is one of the most absorbing I have read for years; it is both beautifully and intricately constructed and it has superb dignity." -The Listener

Rosamond Lehmann (1901-1990) was born on the day of Queen Victoria's funeral, in Buckinghamshire, England, the second of four children. In 1927, a few years after graduating from the University of Cambridge, she published her first novel, Dusty Answer, to critical acclaim and instantaneous celebrity. Lehmann continued to write and publish between 1930 and 1976, penning works including The Weather in the Streets, The Ballad and the Source, and the short memoir The Swan in the Evening. Lehmann was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1982 and remains one of the most distinguished novelists of the twentieth century.