Eustace and Hilda

With an introduction by Anita Brookner

By: L. P. Hartley, Anita Brookner - introduction

Narrated by: Roger Davis

'A masterpiece' Anita Brookner
'A very beautiful novel' Nick Hornby
'Includes some of the most perfect sentences in English' Guardian

At the turn of the twentieth century, two children play on an English beach. Eustace, a gentle, dreamy, boy with a weak heart, relies on his older sister Hilda.

As young adults, Eustace and Hilda are unexpectedly invited to stay at the grand country house of the wealthy Staveley family. The weekend's events will haunt the siblings' lives as their story travels from Oxford colleges to Venetian palazzi.

The magnum opus from the author of The Go-Between, this is an enchanting, tender exploration of two siblings who cannot live together or apart.

With an introduction by Anita Brookner

Critic reviews

A very beautiful novel, full of delicate people and filigree observation (Nick Hornby)

A masterpiece from the very first image ... includes some of the most perfect sentences in English

This masterpiece - for it is no less than that - imposes its convictions without underlining them. One closes the book with a feeling of profound sadness, of regret not only for Eustace and Hilda but for the beautiful literary undertaking that is now ended. Few modern novels impose high standards. This one unquestionably does (Anita Brookner)

'The combined effect of these three books is one of mounting excellence. Eustace, the central figure, is an immortal portrayal of the delights and agonies of childhood and adolescence (John Betjeman)

Apart from George Eliot's Mill on the Floss, no other novel offers such a devastating illumination of sibling rivalry

Powerfully evokes the lost world of childhood. Hartley is a master of character, but never at the expense of plot or pace, and it is rare to find a novelist so skilled at all three

Eustace and Hilda is a beautifully rendered portrait of a brother and sister and their relationship which, indissoluble, loving, also threatens to twist them out of shape. Hartley's writing is precise, allusive, evocative through what is told of the far greater landscape of what is not - few writers are as good at capturing the peculiar confusion of childhood, or of navigating a world full of people we can't quite understand. (Jessie Greengrass)

L. P. Hartley was the first adult author I ever read; he never forgot what it was like to be a child, and in Eustace and Hilda he shows, brilliantly, immersively, how childhood fears and sibling relationships can shape and distort a whole life. (Lissa Evans)