My first book of 2023, and third by Elizabeth Taylor. Compared to the other two, ANGEL and IN A SUMMER SEASON, this seems to have less of a definite conclusion, trailing off into a slice of life with further possibilities for the central characters hinted at but left open ended.

Essentially, it is a meeting of two people from two different kind of possessive homes - Cressie, whose painter grandfather leads a clan of religious, back to old ways proto hippies, and David, more worldly, but completely under his mother's thumb. They cross each other's paths, and various less than preferable decisions are made. By the end, no one has really changed very much, but it still seems that life, somehow will go on, but no one will ever really have what they want.

Particularly good for its character portraits of the two father figures, Cressie's grandfather and David's father, both fundamentally selfish in very different ways.