These Twain

The marriage of Edwin Clayhanger and Hilda Lessways is not the stuff of romance novels. It is something far more interesting: the daily negotiation of two people with complicated pasts learning to share a life. Arnold Bennett, the British writer once compared to Zola and Chekhov, finds genuine drama in the domestic sphere, in the arrangement of furniture, the hosting of dinner parties, the unspoken tensions between husband and wife. Edwin is a proud man, house-proud, conscious of his station as a master-printer in the Staffordshire Midlands. Hilda brings a restless energy into his careful life, a past he does not fully understand and may never fully understand. Together they navigate the social rituals of Edwardian England, where a dinner party can feel like a battleground and a poorly placed chair can speak volumes. This is a novel about what remains unsaid in marriage, about the class anxieties and small dignities that make up a life. For readers who understand that the most profound stories often happen in the most ordinary settings.