JimZ's Reviews > After Julius

The book was divided into three parts: Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Within each part, were chapters with the names of the characters as the chapter titles: Esme, Emma, Cressy, Dan, and Felix. And a chapter at the end of each part referring to some event that happened to all of the characters at the same time on Fridays or Saturdays or Sundays.

I wonder if all her novels took this format. I read ‘The Chronicles of Cazalet’, which she wrote later on in her life (1990-1995, she died in 2014), and they also had this same format (several parts, and within each part chapters with the character’s names as titles).

‘After Julius’ was published in 1965.

For some reason that I now cannot remember, I read several reviews of this book written by several GR friends before I actually read it. I normally do not do that because I want to go into a book relatively naïve. But one thing a GR reviewer had said stuck in my brain while I was reading the book, and I had this (view spoiler)[ sense of dread and gloom. A horrific thing a character did that occurred near the end of the book was revealed in that review, so I knew what was coming. Except I didn’t know which male character was the one who did the horrific thing...was it Dan or was it Alex... Once the horrific event occurred, Emma’s reaction to it was terrible. I have no idea why Elizabeth Jane Howard had written that as her denouement of the event. A man rapes a woman, and the woman accepts that, and married him. Good God! Oh, and that was not the first time a man was violent towards her. Another man was a would-be rapist, but she knees him in the balls to get away from him. And one of the main characters in the book, Felix, who eventually marries Cressy, has this thought about her well before he finds himself falling in love with her: ‘He was divided between wanting to tear down her pants and beat her, or just to tear down her jeans.’ I mean...WTF??!!! (hide spoiler)] I am anxious to read other reviews of this novel, especially, if I can, from reviewers when it was published in 1965. Did they all like it? Can they explain perhaps anything behind Howard’s motives for ending the book in that manner? Does she herself explain her rationale for the ending, perhaps in her memoir, ‘Slipstream’ (2002)?

The first part of the book and a good deal of the second part were boring at times. The last part was interesting, especially when we learn about Julius, Esme’s husband, told in the form of log entries written by either him or a naval signalman that he was responsible for saving after a British destroyer was hit by the Germans in WW II. 2.5 stars

Reviews:
• Very good review by JacquiWine and I enjoyed reading some of the comments made by other people who read her view and commented on it... https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2019...
• https://bookssnob.wordpress.com/2020/...
• https://beautyisasleepingcat.com/2015...