Eva Trout is Elizabeth Bowen's final novel and was shortlisted for the 1970 Booker Prize. First published in 1968, it is about a young woman—the eponymous heroine—who, abandoned by her mother just after her birth, raised by nurses and nannies and educated by governesses all hired by her millionaire father, has difficulty acting and behaving like an adult when, shortly after her father's suicide, she inherits all his money.
Plot summary
Part I-Genesis
The novel opens with Eva's excursion to a lake in the neighbourhood of Larkins where she is staying as a paying guest since her father's death. The lady of Larkins, Iseult Arble, is a former teacher of Eva's whom Eva is very fond of during the school days. However, Eva does not presently fancy the Arbles' guardianship and often travels to the Danceys' house where she can enjoy the company of Catrina, Henry, Andrew and Louise Dancey. In the first section, readers get to know the two schools Eva went to as a young girl. The first school, owned by her father Willy Trout and administered by Constantine's lover Kenneth, is one of the rare places where Eva feels at home but it also has a traumatic effect on her insofar as Eva's roommate Elsinore attempts to commit suicide by drowning herself in the lake. It is in the second school that Eva meets Iseult Smith from whom she receives the attention she has craved all her life. As Eva approaches her 25th birthday after which she will be able to access the fortune her father left behind, both the Arbles and her legal guardian Constantine Ormeau question her capacity to take care of herself and her wealth. To escape the confining guardianship of both Iseult and Constantine, Eva rents a house in Kent. In a conversation with Iseult at Cathay, Eva tells her that she is to give birth to her baby and flees to America where she would purchase a child to make up for her lie. By Eva's departure time, Iseult already suspects a sexual relationship between her husband Eric and Eva and she cannot help thinking that the father of Eva's child is Eric. This suspicion leads to the dissolution of the Arbles' household.
Part II-Eight Years Later
The second part of the novel is infused with Eva's reconsiderations of her past in her quest of becoming who she is. After her return from the USA with her child Jeremy, a boy both "deaf and dumb," Eva falls in love with one of the children she used to hang out with at the Danceys', Henry Dancey, who is now a student at Cambridge University. Although Henry does not feel the same way about Eva in the first place, on their mock hymeneal departure at Victoria station, Henry declares his sincere love for Eva. This unexpected declaration, which makes Eva shed tears of joy, is immediately spoilt by Jeremy who accidentally shoots Eva killing her instantaneously at Victoria Station.
Characters
Major characters
Eva Trout-is the main character of the novel. She is a 24-year-old, socially awkward woman looking forward to her 25th birthday after which she will be entitled to access the fortune her father bequeathed. Although her guardians have not much confidence in her ability to take care of herself, she is a very independent person making her decisions without paying much attention to what people expect of her. At the end of the first section, Eva travels to the USA and spends eight years there. When she comes back, she is the mother of Jeremy whom she apparently purchased from a baby-snatching racket.
Willy Trout- Eva's father. He is an absent character that haunts the novel from the beginning to the end. Despite his poor parenting influence, he bequeaths his daughter a fortune that helps Eva be the independent woman she is.
Iseult Smith-is a former teacher of Eva's who is an idealist teacher at the peak of her career in an English boarding school. The close relationship between Eva and her gradually fades away as Eva starts to live with Iseult and her husband as a paying guest at Larkins, a house located in the middle of fruit trees. She is a very successful teacher pedagogically, but as an intellectual and a wanna-be author of her own novel and an amateur translator, she is rather "an artist manqué", "a façade of erudition."
Eric Arble- Iseult's husband. As one of the few heterosexual couples of the novel, the Arbles don't seem to be enjoying a happy marriage. For Iseult, the main reason for this unhappy marriage is Eva Trout whom they have to take care of or think about all the time.
Constantine Ormeau- the legal guardian of Eva who lives in London. He is one of the homosexual characters in the novel and the lover of Eva's father, Willy Trout.