3 Review(s)

Before Downton Abbey, there was Abingdon Pryory...He drove up to Flanders in the early summer of 1921 knowing that it would be for the last time. He had finally, after nearly four years, reconciled himself to the unalterable fact that she was dead. So begins this haunting novel of war's aftermath and the search for love and hope in a world totally changed. A generation has been lost on the Western Front. The dead have been buried, a harsh peace forged in the halls of Versailles, and the howl of shells replaced by the wail of saxophones as the jazz age begins. But ghosts linger - that long-ago golden summer of 1914 tugging at the memory of Martin Rilke and his British cousins, the Grevilles. From the Countess to the chauffeur, the inhabitants of Abingdon Pryory seek to forget the past and adjust their lives to a new era in which old values, social codes, and sexual mores have been irretrievably swept away. "Circles of Time" captures the age as these strongly-drawn characters experience it, unfolding against England's most gracious manor house, the steamy nightclubs of London's Soho, and the despair of Germany caught in the nightmare of anarchy and inflation.