The Olivia Curtis Novels: Invitation to the Waltz and The Weather in the Streets

This collection pairs two novels by Rosamond Lehmann featuring the same protagonist across a ten-year span. The first novel follows seventeen-year-old Olivia Curtis as she prepares for and attends her first dance, confiding her hopes and anxieties in her diary about her family and the upcoming event. The second novel reunites Olivia, now in her twenties and divorced, with Rollo Spencer, her childhood crush from that ball, when they meet on a train. Their chance encounter leads to a secret affair, complicated by Rollo's marriage. The novel traces the course of their relationship as Olivia grapples with the emotional consequences of being involved with a married man. Lehmann's novels explore the inner lives of a young woman at two pivotal moments: on the threshold of adulthood and later, confronting the realities of love and desire in her twenties.