"It is an unsettling book. Just as you have privately made up your mind, perhaps, to be sensible, and be satisfied with what you have—or haven't—and to forget about a oneness with somebody, and are feeling rich enough with much less, this book tells you a story which reaches into some inner part of you that was getting dried up, and makes you feel painfully aware of the things you are missing.
"Here for instance is part of a letter that one woman writes:
"'In a way I don't see why you should ever want to kiss me again. Do you understand what I mean, that I feel so merged, so eternally in your arms that I can hardly believe in the process of being taken into them again and again? Oh my dear, do you notice how one never can use superlatives when they really would mean something? They seem to slink away ashamed of their loose lives. After all we can't "make love" to one another. We both do it too well. This is not an incident, a game, an art; ours is not a love affair, it is life.'
"Another extract: 'I can't sleep. There is something oppressive in the atmosphere.... There is always a tenseness when you are not there, a cumulative unreality. I have felt it all day.... I seemed to be a ghost wandering about in some meaningless void. It was not only that I couldn't believe in the people, I could not even believe in the chairs and tables; it was tiring. You know how in fairy tales the lovely Princess is turned into a toad and has to wait for a kiss to release her, that was what I felt like—that nothing but your touch could make me into a human being again.'
"Her trueness is so exquisite, it really doesn't need any plots. For example, she is describing a man who has fallen in love, and who, though he used to be talkative, can now only stammer. He wants to propose to a beautiful girl but he can't. 'One day they were walking through a bluebell wood.... "I must speak," he said to himself unhappily, while he realised he was physically incapable of bringing out the most common-place phrase....'
"He decided to speak when he saw the next orchis.
"He thought of a woman he had once imagined himself in love with. She had had red hair and green eyes ... and red hair had seemed infinitely wicked and alluring and adventurous....
"He saw an orchis and hastily averted his eyes.
"He thought of a rocking horse he had had as a child, dappled grey with a grey yellow tail and a scarlet saddle....
"Another orchis. He looked at her imploringly.