Eustace and Hilda: A Trilogy (New York Review Books Classics) - Softcover

The combined effect of these three books is one of mounting excellence. Eustace, the central figure, is an immortal portrayal of the delights and agonies of childhood and adolescence. I cannot but envy the author of these books. He must feel immensely satisfied to have written a social novel which is in the class of George Meredith. He is a mature and rich writer, his gift for narrative balancing nicely with his other gifts of description and dialogue.
-- John Betjeman

The three books gathered together as Eustace and Hilda explore a brother and sister's lifelong relationship. Hilda, the older child, is both self-sacrificing and domineering, as puritanical as she is gorgeous; Eustace is a gentle, dreamy, pleasure-loving boy: the two siblings could hardly be more different, but they are also deeply devoted. And yet as Eustace and Hilda grow up and seek to go their separate ways in a world of power and position, money and love, their relationship is marked by increasing pain.

L. P. Hartley's much-loved novel, the magnum opus of one of twentieth-century England's best writers, is a complex and spellbinding work: a comedy of upper-class manners; a study in the subtlest nuances of feeling; a poignant reckoning with the ironies of character and fate. Above all, it is about two people who cannot live together or apart, about the ties that bind—and break.