Marking Time

As featured on BBC Radio 4 Open BookBeautifully and poignantly told, Marking Time is the second novel in Elizabeth Jane Howard’s bestselling family saga The Cazalet Chronicles, set during the onset of World War II.‘She helps us to do the necessary thing – open our eyes and our hearts’ – Hilary Mantel, bestselling author of Wolf HallHome Place, Sussex, 1939. As the shadows of the Second World War roll in, banishing the sun-drenched days of childish games and trips to the coast, a new generation of Cazalets takes up the family’s story.Louise, who dreams of becoming a great actress, finds herself facing the harsh reality that her parents have their own lives with secrets, passions and yearnings. Clary, an aspiring writer, learns that her beloved father, Rupert, is now missing somewhere on the shores of France. And sensitive, imaginative Polly feels stuck, haunted by her nightmares about the war.‘Charming, poignant and quite irresistible . . . to be cherished and shared‘ – The TimesMarking Time is the second volume of the extraordinary Cazalet Chronicles and a perfect addition to your collection. Marking Time is followed by Confusion, the third book in the series.

She is one of those novelists who shows, through her work, what the novel is for . . . She helps us to do the necessary thing – open our eyes and our hearts, Like [Elena] Ferrante, Howard’s fictional sphere is domestic and yet reveals deeper truths about human nature, Howard is a sharp observer of human drama and psychology, and writes about pain, loss and longing superbly well, I don’t know how I’d managed to miss [The Cazalet Chronicles] until now, but they’re absolute heaven, [N]o detail is too small to be included, so charged with significance is the material envelope of that lost world

Elizabeth Jane Howard was the author of fifteen highly acclaimed novels, including the five volumes of The Cazalet Chronicles, as well as After Julius, Falling, Getting It Right, Love All, and Odd Girl Out. The Cazalet Chronicles – The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, Casting Off and All Change – have become established as modern classics and have been adapted for a major BBC television series and for BBC Radio 4. She had one child, Nicola, and married three times – lastly to fellow author Sir Kingsley Amis. In 2000 she was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, and in 2002 Macmillan published her autobiography, Slipstream. She died, aged ninety, at home in Suffolk on 2 January 2014.