To The North by Elizabeth Bowen

I've been diving pretty deep into science fiction and fantasy the last little while, and so reading To the North was a little like exercising unused muscles - not genre, not recent mainstream fiction, something a little older and differently paced, with nothing of the fantastic about it. It's a welcome break and a needed reminder of what books outside my favourite genres are (which is why I always try to keep a couple of classics/essential book lists on my radar.)

To the North feels like it concerns a strange liminal place in time - a place where a spinster was not the worst thing in the world to be, and a woman could pursue her own career - in this case, running a travel agency - but where the looming constellation of meanings around pre-marital sex and interactions between men and women who were not married were quite different from what they are now. Not only do I need to turn off my science fiction brain, I need to turn off the part of me from the present that just tells me that Emmeline needs to kick Markie to the curb and be done with him.

But individuals are who they are, and so things are not shaken off so lightly. And different times have different structures that feel natural and are incredibly powerful, even if they've shifted so entirely, just a few decades later. Still, this book teeters on the cusp of a time where, were Emmeline just a little bit different, or were it a little later, this would be the story of a jackass ex-lover, but not a tragedy.

So, what is this book about? Cecilia is a young widow, who, when she is in London, lives with her deceased husband's sister, Emmeline. Cecilia is decidedly modern, not sure how she feels about marrying again, and is comfortable enough financially that she can flit about doing whatever catches her fancy. Emmeline is slightly quieter and more serious, runs her own business with a friend, but it doesn't seem she has ever had a significant romantic relationship.

Two men are part of this story as well - Markie, self-obsessed and a bit cruel, but charming, and Julian, who doesn't know if he wants to give up his bachelor ways. I mean that literally, not as code for "never intends to marry." Both have interactions with both women that make it ambivalent which one they are attracted to. Unfortunately for Emmeline, she ends up having a dalliance with Markie, who Cecilia might have been able to handle, but who pushes her away and pulls her back in ways that get her more and more connected, and therefore, more and more hurt.

And that is the interesting thing - it isn't that a relationship with Markie would be this destructive to everyone, but it is to Emmeline, who finds her need for freedom and travel and independence increasingly dependent on him. But this isn't done with the heady lushness that a similar story might get today, with a different writer. There is a certain remove, a way that things are suggested rather than said, small moments that the reader is left to think through and feel at leisure, instead of having everything spelled out.

The dalliance does not end well, and you think, in another time, another woman, another author, we would not have ended up here. But it was engrossing to see how we did.