The Mulberry Tree

This sampler of miscellaneous nonfiction by the late Anglo-Irish writer includes essays, magazine articles, book prefaces and reviews, letters, broadcasts and autobiographical fragments. Lee supplies a brief preface and briefer introductions to the various categories. These attempt to highlight the various influences that contributed to Bowen's development as a writer and to her attitude toward what she viewed as a chaotic, sensationalistic world that had replaced the one she had known as a child. The title piece is a 1934 essay about the girls' boarding school in Kent that Bowen attended during WW I. As Bowen recalls, the emotions of these adolescent girls were so enameled by class and privilege that the death of a brother on a distant European battlefield is never mentioned, much less never publicly mourned. What ultimately comes across in this and subsequent entries is an impression of an intuitive, cerebral and once privileged woman contemplating a world doubly destroyed by two world wars. . .and preferring what had come before. The last - and perhaps most interesting - entries are the fragments of Bowen's uncompleted memoirs, penned shortly before her death in 1973. Her "underlying theme" was "the relation between (her) life and art." In the first chapter, she. . .delineates the landscape of Kent - where she had lived less than a year - evoking its mysteries as viewed by a child. The unfinished second chapter discusses the importance of "places" to her development as a writer. Her views on literature are further elaborated in a 1945 essay, "Notes on Writing a Novel," and in prefaces to various books (most interesting: a new edition of Virginia Woolf's Orlando). Other gleanings: a small selection of the more than 700 book reviews she wrote. Most of the material here, however, is of little interest to the average reader. Bowen's letters deal with mundane trivia, except for two that were broadcast on the BBC in which she discusses her reasons for becoming a writer. She tends to be numbingly wordy, while revealing little of herself, Editor Lee provides virtually no guidance, eschewing even a brief biography. Of interest chiefly to ardent Bowen enthusiasts. (Kirkus Reviews)