The way of gentleness - Elizabeth Vickers

A Princess Dies. A Nation Mourns. A Princess lives again. One humid night towards the end of August, a princess, the most famous woman in the world -- let us call her Helena -- dies with her lover in a car crash in a Parisian underpass. At almost the same moment, a second aristocratic Englishwoman -- though one in very different material circumstances -- is killed not far away by speeding motorcyclists. In 'another country' (on what appears to be a Greek island) these events are observed and their significance recognized. Elizabeth Vickers' novel explores, in a highly intelligent, imaginative and sympathetic way, the lives of those involved in that terrible accident, the intelligence of the heart possessed by the woman at their centre and the place she took, and now takes, in the world's imagination. It suggests that her life may have had a significance more profound than it appeared, and that even from tragic events can come good and valuable consequences. The Way of Gentleness is partly based on real events, part novel, part fable. Why was the world so moved, so traumatized, by the death of that Princess?;The Way of Gentleness, beautifully written, psychologically convincing and, to the end, extraordinarily moving, attempts with tact and affection to say why.