Bruges, bedecked with stiff Madonnas . . . London, going wild in the Twenties . . . Paris, where white powdered faces gleam from cafe tables . . . Against these backdrops unfolds the life of Claud Pickering as he describes his boyhood, dominated by his step-mother Helena, and the complications and compromises, the yearnings and expectations of young adulthood. It is the story of his failed marriage, and it is the story of his passion for Cecil, a singer, who haunts Claud with all the elusiveness - and the destructiveness - of a dream. Too Dear For My Possessing is the first volume in the 'Helena' trilogy, in which Pamela Hansford Johnson demonstrates superbly her considerable powers as a novelist. The story continues in An Avenue of Stone and concludes in A Summer To Decide.

Book by Johnson, Pamela Hansford

A Summer To Decide concludes Pamela Hansford Johnson's highly acclaimed trilogy, the first two volumes of which are Too Dear For My Possessing and An Avenue Of Stone. Helena, the presiding genius of the trilogy, dies near the outset of this book, leaving only her indomitable spirit to help her children struggle on without her. For her daughter, Charmian, having just given birth to a daughter herself, and trapped in a marriage to the now drunken and womanizing Evan, it is truly a struggle; one which is relieved only by her absorption in her child, by Evan's inevitable downfall, and by the passionate concern of her half-brother, Claud. Pamela Hansford Johnson is in confident control of her art and in all her characters - in Evan and his pathetic mother, in Charmian and Claud - she gives us the true and deep understanding of human nature which enriches all her novels. 'A most impressive achievement' Isabel Quigley, Biographer