So in this book Snow turns to matters of love - with the recurring themes and tropes of mental illness and professional careers pulsing alongside. Snow's description of Lewis Eliot's loss of personal ambition resonates with the depiction of how he learns to experience love and trust, following the saddest of false starts in marriage with a mentally ill and desperately vulnerable wife. These are clever books, slicing out themes, overlapping with each other, offering different dimensions and insights into a particular kind of English life which is still resonant many years in the future, if only to a small audience. Deserving of more readers!

1894 Homecoming, by C. P. Snow (read 22 Dec 1984) This seventh novel in the series tells of Lewis Eliot's wife Sheila committing suicide, his meeting Margaret Davidson, her marriage to Geoffrey, and events thereafter. I was appalled at the apparent attitude of Lewis to the fact that Margaret was married to another man. I cannot say I enjoyed the book. One of the poorer ones in the series. ( )