Dusty Answer
- Author
Regular price
£10.99
Regular price
Sale price
£10.99
Unit price
per
ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE BRITISH WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
'The lyrical, sensuous quality . . . puts her immediately into the front rank of English writers' THE TIMES
'It will consume you . . . transforming your whole inner life for the time it takes to read' JONATHAN COE
'She is immensely readable, acute, passionate, funny and original' ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD
'Mamma was fast asleep at home, her spirit lapped in unconsciousness. Her dreams would not divine that her daughter had stolen out to meet a lover. And next door also they slept unawares, while one of them broke from the circle and came alone to clasp a stranger . . . '
A sensitive only child, Judith Earle has always been a little in love with the glamorous Fyfe boys who come to stay in the house next door. With the War over and Judith on the brink of going to Cambridge, the cousins arrive again - and she is caught once more in their spell. Falling hopelessly in love with Roddy, Judith's passionate entanglements - with each of the cousins, and with the charismatic Jennifer at Cambridge - will leave her forever changed. Dusty Answer traces with delicate nostalgia childhood friendships and the pangs of thwarted young love.
Lehmann's first novel was published to sensational acclaim in 1927 and became a landmark book of the interwar period, capturing the voice of a new generation.
'The lyrical, sensuous quality . . . puts her immediately into the front rank of English writers' THE TIMES
'It will consume you . . . transforming your whole inner life for the time it takes to read' JONATHAN COE
'She is immensely readable, acute, passionate, funny and original' ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD
'Mamma was fast asleep at home, her spirit lapped in unconsciousness. Her dreams would not divine that her daughter had stolen out to meet a lover. And next door also they slept unawares, while one of them broke from the circle and came alone to clasp a stranger . . . '
A sensitive only child, Judith Earle has always been a little in love with the glamorous Fyfe boys who come to stay in the house next door. With the War over and Judith on the brink of going to Cambridge, the cousins arrive again - and she is caught once more in their spell. Falling hopelessly in love with Roddy, Judith's passionate entanglements - with each of the cousins, and with the charismatic Jennifer at Cambridge - will leave her forever changed. Dusty Answer traces with delicate nostalgia childhood friendships and the pangs of thwarted young love.
Lehmann's first novel was published to sensational acclaim in 1927 and became a landmark book of the interwar period, capturing the voice of a new generation.
- Published: Jun 11 2026
- ISBN: 9780349017952
Press Reviews
Elizabeth Jane Howard
[Lehman] is immensely readable, acute, passionate, funny and original
- Telegraph
Beautifully written and observed, and an interesting representation of the ideas of and pressures upon a generation of intellectual women immediately after the Great War
- Sunday Times
It is not often that one can say with confidence of a first novel by a young writer that it reveals new possibilities for literature. But there are qualities in this book that mark it out as quite the most striking first novel of this generation . . . The modern young woman, with all her frankness and perplexities in the semi-pagan world of today, has never been depicted with more honesty, or with more exquisite art
- Jonathan Coe
It will consume you entirely, transforming your whole inner life for the time it takes to read
Jonathan Coe
It will consume you entirely, transforming your whole inner life for the time it takes to read
Margaret Drabble
Lehmann has always written brilliantly of women in love, of mothers and daughters
Harriet Lane
IndependentLehmann's story is both universal and deliciously particular, like all the best coming-of-age stories. No one has written more brilliantly about having one's heart broken, about despair and longing, humiliation and hope: all the wretched thrilling chaos that accompanies growing up. Finding it at fifteen felt a little like stumbling upon magic. Miraculously, all these years and re-readings later, it still has that effect on me
- The Times
The lyrical, sensuous quality of her descriptive writing and her clear yet compassionate insight into individual psychology puts her immediately into the front rank of English writers
- THE TIMES
The lyrical, sensuous quality of her descriptive writing and her clear yet compassionate insight into individual psychology puts her immediately into the front rank of English writers
- Spectator
This is, indeed, one of the most charming and convincing studies of young womanhood that we have read for some time
- Atlantic
Whoever loves the earth, and especially whoever loves English earth, will drink delicious draughts from this book; for not only beauty, but the ache of beauty, is alive in it