Dusty Answer ([New ed.])

'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 ...' Judith Earle, over-earnest and inexperienced, has always been a little in love with each of the four cousins who come to stay next door and, on her return from Cambridge, becomes madly in love with one of them - Roddy, a 'sensation-hunter'. "Dusty Answer" traces with delicate nostalgia childhood friendships and the pangs of thwarted young love. "Dusty Answer", Lehmann's first novel, was published to sensational acclaim in 1927, and became a landmark book of the inter-war period, shocking in its time, capturing the voice of the younger generation.