A concern with appearances

I was bemused by this novel — a first from Katherine Bucknell, better known as an editor of Isherwood’s diaries and of Auden studies. In its concentration on houses (in London and Virginia) and their furnishings, I kept thinking of Henry James and such novels as Portrait of a Lady and The Spoils of Poynton and this had me holding my breath, hoping for more psychological complexity and characters changed by experience. In opposition to this, I sometimes had the exasperated feeling that I was reading Interiors magazine with a rather thin story attached.

What is of interest in Canarino is that it is not so much a portrait of a lady as a portrait of a neurotic monster. Elizabeth Judd, American wife of a rich investment banker, is beautiful, refined to the point of extinction and described as ‘the queen of good taste’. Obsessed with appearances and possessions, she seems incapable of relating to her children or indeed anyone else.