SOURCE: Austin, Allan E. “The Power of the Past.” In Elizabeth Bowen: Revised Edition, pp. 48-69. Boston, Mass.: Twayne, 1989.

In the following excerpt, Austin discusses Bowen's last four novels—The Heat of the Day, A World of Love, The Little Girls, and Eva Trout—which reveal the writer's renewed sense of adventure and willingness to address fresh challenges.

Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures in love. 

—Iris Murdoch, The Bell

Elizabeth Bowen's third group and final four novels disclose her readiness to set herself new and challenging problems. In part, of course, she had to move on from The Death of the Heart, which carried her earlier material to a finely realized logical conclusion. Aside from this novel, her last work is in many ways her most interesting; for it shows the author working with a new sense of adventure. And, if none of these novels...