The Lost Traveller (Virago Modern Classics)

The Lost Traveller is the second in the semi-autobiographical tetrology by Antonia White.White was a contemporary of Woolfe and such Bloomsbury luminaries as Djuna Barnes. Yet she is relatively unknown to Americans. Thanks to Carmen Callil, who founded Virago Press and knew Antonia White, we can savor these classics which had been sadly in and out of print over the last years.The Lost Traveller continues the story of Nanda, who is renamed Clara Bachelor in the second through fourth novels. We pick up her story as she finishes high school at St. Marks (really St. Paul's where White's domineering father Cecil Bottings was a classics master.) Clara fears a career as a dried up female don at Oxford or Cambridge, though her talents in writing indicate she could follow her father's brilliant footsteps. In typically adolescent fashion, she gets a half-formed idea to go on stage after a stint at acting school. She has no real talent, but gets by on charm and good looks. She meets stage-struck, upper-crust and totally hopeless Archie and their fate becomes tangled together, despite her resistance to him and her crush on another actor, Stephen. Clara moves aimlessly from acting to being a governess for an upper-class Catholic family. But tragedy strikes her there. While White also was a governess, this part of the novel is one of the few pure pieces of fiction she ever wrote. And it sets up the stage for "The Sugar House" and the return of Archie. You should read "Frost in May" first, and fortunately, it is due to be reprinted soon. Don't miss these works of a minor master who sadly suffered from writer's block and left us all too little of her skillful work.

"The Lost Traveller" continues where "Frost in May " ended.However the name of the main character has been changed from Nanda Grey to Clara Batchelor.This book is about Clara's life throughout her teenage years.It is a wonderful and moving novel which deals with Clara's intense relationship with her parents and her life after she leaves her strict convent boarding school.It is set during world war one and is,in itself, a very tragic novel.I would reccomend reading it as part of the series rather than on it's own.The characters are so real that it's hard to beleive it's a fictional novel.I love this book and this series and it's really suitable for anyone.Read it.