BOOKS / In brief

Confusion by Elizabeth Jane Howard, Macmillan pounds 14.99.

Will Rupert return at last? Will Villy find out that Jessica is having an affair with Laurence? Though absorbing and elegant, this third book about the Cazalet family, set in the years 1942-1945, is limited in scope, dealing largely with the love lives of the family and the minor austerities they undergo, 'the juxtaposition of the gas mask and the fur rug'. Their traumas, though far from superficial, are domestic: Louise, for example, psychologically paralysed by her father's sexual advances, treated as a breeding machine by her husband and his sinister, possessive mother. The most telling moment is when Zoe Cazalet's Jewish-American lover returns from visiting Belsen and she is quite unable to connect with his suffering; there is simply no room for it in the comfortable, worthy Cazalet world. The family - and, in consequence, the book - remain largely, and not quite plausibly, insulated from the worst terrors of the war.

Pemberley: A Sequel to Pride and Prejudice by Emma Tennant, Hodder pounds 9.99.

Rich man marries girl of modest fortune, and is embarrassed by her relatives. Worse, he wants a son and she shows no sign of conceiving. Misunderstandings and confusion lead to a lacklustre happy ending. You keep reading phrases that give you that deja vu sensation, only last time you read them they sounded better. There are moments of humour, but in the main the novel is a clumsy scrapbag of quotes and self- conscious echoes of plot. Nor does Emma Tennant hesitate to tamper: killing Mr Bennet, who Austen said made many visits to Pemberley, bringing Wickham there, though Austen said Darcy could never receive him. What is unforgivable is the character of this author's Elizabeth: she is only occasionally 'lively' or 'sportive', and has become instead an anxious, timid creature whose sentimental exchanges with Darcy sometimes read like Mills & Boon.