Every Eye by Isobel English

This was a tiny masterpiece. Not unlike Diana Athill's novel Don't Look at Me Like That, this novel shifts between the youth and middle age of a young woman growing up, and middle-aged, in the mid-century, tracking the sometimes benign, sometimes malign influence of her aunt by marriage. The writing is exquisite, the miniature plot well handled and compelling. Isobel English was a friend and contemporary of Muriel Spark and Olivia Manning, and there are points of comparison with both here.