Beauman rightly regards Taylor’s short stories as the summit of her achievement. But it was surely an error to produce so many summaries of their plots. Unlike the stories of Maupassant and Maugham, hers do not exert their lure because of teasing twists and turns of narrative, followed by some ironic or shattering denouement. Her method — which she herself described as ‘I break in at a certain stage of people’s emotional developments, not the beginning, and leave them with the end merely indicated’ — is akin to that of Chekhov. Of course, no one would claim that, largely confining herself to characters, for the most part female, of the English middle classes, she possesses Chekhov’s range. But like him she is extraordinarily sensitive to wispy nuances of emotion and the life-shaking decisions that may arise from them like the destruction that follows the faint, far-off tremor of an earthquake. In addition, she is one of those writers, like Anita Brookner and Sybille Bedford, who are incapable of ever writing badly or even carelessly.
For those who wish to make the acquaintance of this remarkable novelist still chiefly known for not being better known, Beauman would clearly recommend Taylor’s fifth book A Game of Hide and Seek, which she describes as her ‘most flawless novel’ (not all that happy a phrase). But though that book has an extraordinary stylistic radiance and romantic intensity, I myself would opt for the posthumously published Blaming, which, to my surprise, Beauman clearly does not rate all that highly. Written when, in her early sixties, Taylor knew that she was terminally ill with an insidiously creeping cancer, its unsparing account of how people constantly blame not merely others but also themselves has, uncharacteristically, a gritty relentlessness that is profoundly impressive.
In her Acknowledgements Beauman records that her book has made Taylor’s son and daughter ‘very angry and distressed’ (their own words). I am amazed. She seems to me to have done full justice both to an exceptional woman and to an exceptional writer. Taylor’s is certainly a delicate talent in comparison with the robust and ebullient ones of such her contemporaries as Anthony Burgess and her lifetime admirer Kingsley Amis. But my hunch is that she will continue to be cherished when many such writers have been sucked down into the oubliette of critical and reader indifference.
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