Marriage

A monoplane falling out of the sky on a hot afternoon can shatter the leisurely peace of a croquet game below. And an injured aviator like Geoffrey Trafford can quite disrupt the calm of a girl like Marjorie Pope. All obstacles - her modern views, her socialism, her cool engagement to the worldly Mr Magnet - are swept away; and, as in every misguided fairy tale, ''the poor dears haven''t the shadow of a doubt they will live happily ever after''. Written when Wells himself was caught in the entanglements of home and sex, this funny, utterly engrossing novel, shows him grappling with a perennial question; how can a marriage survive, when conventions stifle, when men and women want different things, when passions fade? Ironically, the answer he came to led to his meeting with an enraged young reviewer, Rebecca West - a collision as devastating as the plane crash in the rectory garden.