Confusion

As featured on BBC Radio 4 Open BookSet in the height of the Second World War, The Cazalet Chronicles continues with the third in the series, Confusion, where chaos has become a way of life for the Cazalet family.'She helps us to do the necessary thing – open our eyes and our hearts' – Hilary Mantel, bestselling author of Wolf HallIt’s 1942 and the dark days of war seem never-ending. Scattered across the still-peaceful Sussex countryside and air-raid-threatened London, the divided Cazalets begin to find the battle for survival echoing the confusion in their own lives.Headstrong, independent Louise surprises the whole family when she abandons her dreams of being an actress and instead makes a society marriage. Polly, now living in London with Clary, is struggling to come to terms with the death of her mother and manage her grieving father. Meanwhile, Clary is painfully aware that what she lacks in beauty she makes up for in intelligence, and is the only member of the family who believes that her father might not be dead . . .'[N]o detail is too small to be included, so charged with significance is the material envelope of that lost world' – Tessa Hadley, bestselling author of After the FuneralConfusion is the heartbreaking and heartwarming third instalment of Elizabeth Jane Howard's bestselling series. It is followed by the fourth book, Casting Off.

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.