Imagined Corners, Canongate Classics

In this stirring debut novel by the acclaimed Scottish author, a young woman struggles against the confines of early twentieth century British propriety.

Novelist Willa Muir was an acute and acerbic observer with an intimate knowledge of the Scottish middle-class conventions she describes in her debut novel, Imagined Corners. In it, young Elizabeth Shand, newly married to the unstable but handsome Hector, finds herself in the social, intellectual and spiritual strait-jacket of small-town life in the early 20th century.

The growing complexity of these entangled relationships is further heightened when her sister-in-law and namesake returns from Italy, sophisticated and freshly widowed. Through her, Elizabeth rediscovers her desire to face life honestly and intelligently. Reassessing her enforced life of petty vanities and delusion, she begins to consider new possibilities of personal and sexual freedom.