A Cage for Lovers

E-384: Houghton Mifflin. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 1957. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Hardcover. 8vo. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA. 1957. 178 pgs. First Edition/First Printing. DJ has light shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities. Bound in cloth boards with titles present to the spine and front board. Boards have light shelf-wear present to the extremities. Previous owner's name present to the FFEP. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid. This 1957 novel is little-known and what few words have been said about it are mixed. Powell was, at her best, an astute writer and comic genius. Both of these traits are in evidence here, in her second-to-last book. She was struggling with progressive health problems and changing society by this point, so her writing became quicker-paced, the scenes less dense, the focus on fewer characters. These weren't necessarily flaws. Cage comes off more effectively than her next, and last, novel. Both concern coming-of-age for naive rural folk navigating a city. Unlike her final novel covering a young buck in comic Manhattan, Cage follows a romantic maiden as the blinders come off in Paris. What is initially frustrating about the novel's ambiguity in the beginning is actually fundamental to the plot, as we and the heroine learn what each person's role was to the other, both intended and unwitting. EB; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 178 pages .