num_pages: 140
description: He is standing in the middle of the room. She is sitting by the window, staring out over the East River. The late sunlight from the opposite window touches her shoulders and hair, it casts the shadow of palm leaves across the carpet, over her arm. The chair she sits in casts a shadow before her.There is another shadow, hers. It falls behind her.Behind her, and cast by what light? She is casting a shadow in the wrong direction. There's no light shining upon her from the east window, it comes from the west window. What is she looking at?So the scene is set for perhaps the most enchanted of all voyages to which Mrs Spark has invited her readers. On a round trip from present-day life in New York to war-time Intelligence work in England in 1944 and back again, the story gathers in characters who could only have been created by the author of Memento Mori, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Comforters.
language: English
title: The Hothouse by the East River
titlecomplete: The Hothouse by the East River
genres: Fiction, War, British Literature, Womens, Literature, Classics, Novels, Historical Fiction, 20th Century, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 388
publisher: Penguin Books