A Reversion to Type

A mother raises her son in Ceylon, far from the English estate that defines his family. When young Cecil is summoned to Squires, the ancestral home that bears his name but feels like foreign territory, the collision between his upbringing and his lineage becomes impossible to ignore. E.M. Delafield, the creator of the immortal Provincial Lady, turns her scalpel wit to the Aviolet family: Lady Aviolet, who governs Squires with iron manners and steeper expectations; Rose, the daughter-in-law whose maternal instincts have been shaped by years abroad; and Cecil, caught between his mother's intuitive love and his grandmother's demanding standards. Dr. Lucian, the family physician, serves as an observer to the quiet warfare over the boy's health, education, and soul. What unfolds is neither melodrama nor mere comedy, but something more unsettling: the question of whether we can escape what we were born into, and whether the people who claim to love us might be the ones who变形 us most. Delafield's 1923 novel is a sharp, humane examination of how families can shelter and suffocate in equal measure, and what it costs to belong somewhere you were never truly raised.