Book Review: The Glittering Hour

By Jessica Oravec

 

In The Glittering Hour, by Iona Grey, Selena Lenox seems to have it all. She is young and beautiful and runs with the “bright young things” of the 1920s. She takes risks, parties too much for her parents’ tastes, and lives life to the fullest.

After an unexpected accident, Selena meets Lawrence, a poor, young artist. They are worlds apart. And yet, Selena finds herself falling for him and tries to imagine herself in a different life from the one that is expected of her. As she begins to imagine a different world, an unexpected tragedy jolts her back to reality. Suddenly, she can no longer imagine the vulnerability of a world filled with love, so she runs off and marries someone predictable and safe.

But then, Selena has a daughter, Alice. As she tells her story to Alice, her daughter discovers who her mother truly is, which is very different from who she thought. As Alice learns more about her mom, she discovers a new world filled with color, life, and love.

The Glittering Hour is a beautiful novel filled with love, loss, and pain. It reveals the despair hiding within the roaring 20s, and the life choices that were made due to the losses from the Great War. Grey has written a novel with a lot of heart and soul. The story is filled with brilliant prose that brings the characters to life, causing them to stay with readers long after the final page is read.