About the Book
A Favourite of the Gods is the story of two generations of a single family, united by a strong matrilineal bond but divided by the customs of their differing nationalities. Anna Howland, the matriarch and American heiress, born in the 1870s to a prominent, liberal New England family marries an Italian prince and makes her home in Rome; her daughter Constanza, the favorite of the title, inherits her mother’s beauty, intelligence, and wealth, along with her father’s Catholicism, which she soon rejects.
When disaster strikes, Anna and the prince fall back on the standards of behavior of their disparate cultures; Constanza, with her European upbringing, is free to plot her own course, and she does so with daring, making an unconventional life for herself in England and on the continent during and after the First World War.
Her own daughter Flavia is the heroine of A Compass Error, which begins where the first novel concludes. Flavia too is a brilliant young woman, though both more brash and more faltering than her mother, studying for her entrance exam to Oxford when she becomes involved with a mysterious woman whose arrival at a sensitive moment in Flavia’s adolescence will alter both her and her mother’s lives forever.
About the Author :
Sybille Bedford (1911–2006) was born Sybille von Schoenebeck in Charlottenburg, Germany, to an aristocratic German father and a partly Jewish, Hamburg-born mother. Raised variously in Germany, Italy, France, and England, she lived with her mother and Italian stepfather after her father’s death when she was seven, and was educated privately. Encouraged by Aldous Huxley, Bedford began writing fiction at the age of sixteen and went on to publish four novels, all influenced by her itinerant childhood among the European aristocracy: A Legacy, Jigsaw (short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize), and A Favourite of the Gods and A Compass Error. She married Walter Bedford in 1935 and lived briefly in America during World War II, before returning to England. She was a prolific travel writer, the author of a two volume biography of her friend Huxley, and a legal journalist, covering nearly one hundred trials. In 1981 she was awarded the Order of the British Empire.
Daniel Mendelsohn was born in 1960 and studied classics at the University of Virginia and at Princeton. His essays and reviews appear regularly in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review. His books include The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million; a memoir, The Elusive Embrace; and two collections of critical essays, including Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture, published by New York Review Books. He teaches literature at Bard College.
Review :
"In its diversity, its erudition, and above all, its moral and intellectual fastidiousness, Sybille Bedford’s work is remarkably similar to that of her friend Rebecca West... This Favourite of the Gods, blessed by them with so multifaceted a talent, deserves to become the favourite of every discerning novel-reader." —Francis King, The Spectator
“Sybille Bedford’s A Compass Error is a moving and fascinating novel...a witty book, both in sentiment and idiom...full of civilised and satisfying ironies... There is a notable element of suspense which is cunningly sustained, both on a moral and a practical level, to the last page.” —Simon Raven, The Spectator
“Taken as a tour of a picture gallery hung with family portraits painted in elegant and commanding style, A Favourite of the Gods has its own unmistakable distinction.” —Virgilia Peterson, Newsday
“Often compared to Henry James, [in A Compass Error] Mrs. Bedford moves through an expatriated, cultivated circle just before the war with an older, equally unattached, less knowing Maisie...one cannot overlook the assured presence of a graceful, worldly writer.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Sybille Bedford has an original talent. Her portraits are razor sharp and individual and she views the world with wit, irony, and cool restraint. In [A Favourite of the Gods], she gives a panoramic view of life where each action plays its part in determining events to come.” —Grace P. Comans, The Hartford Courant
“Gracefully written and, in one portion, as filled with suspense as anything you are likely to find...A Compass Error gives much pleasure.” —Cecile Shapiro, Saturday Review
“A Jamesian world artfully re-shaped by an unconventional female writer.” —Emma Hagestadt, The Independent
“[A Compass Error] demonstrates a firm control of form and a clarity of style.” —Stanley Reynolds, New Statesman
“A Compass Error has major virtues. It has narrative strength, felicity of phrase and the ability to evoke, with the most exquisite economy, the way people used to live and behave.... An important, perhaps a major book.” —Meryle Secrest, The Washington Post
