The Heat of the Day

By: Elizabeth Bowen

Narrated by: Pearl Hewitt

In The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen brilliantly recreates the tense and dangerous atmosphere of London during the bombing raids of World War II.

Many people have fled the city, and those who stayed behind find themselves thrown together in an odd intimacy born of crisis. Stella Rodney is one of those who chose to stay. But for her, the sense of impending catastrophe becomes acutely personal when she discovers that her lover, Robert, is suspected of selling secrets to the enemy, and that the man who is following him wants Stella herself as the price of his silence. Caught between these two men, not sure whom to believe, Stella finds her world crumbling as she learns how little we can truly know of those around us.

©1948, 1976 Elizabeth D. C. Cameron (P)2023 Tantor

Monotonous narration

I wanted to like this, but I couldn’t get past the narration. There was very little distinction between character voices, so often one couldn’t discern which character was speaking.

A Bloomsbury Bore

Every thought and feeling is drawn out in exquisite detail. Zero room for the reader’s imagination to breath. Minuscule plot. Voice was pleasant enough. But the reader’s tractor was underpowered and bit too inarticulate to plow this field of ten foot daisies.

A rather precious, too precious piece of writing

This is an overwrought book. So overwrought it is tedious to the point of unreadable. Took me several tries, but still no.