The Memorial: Portrait of a Family

Set in the aftermath of World War I, Christopher Isherwood's "The Memorial" is the witty, almost forensic portrayal of the dissolution of a tradition-bound English family. On the cusp of adulthood, the Cambridge student Eric Vernon finds himself torn between his desire to emulate his heroic father, who led a life of quiet sacrifice before dying in the war, and his envy of his father's roguish friend who survived the war and afterward threw himself into gay life.