Written in 1968, The Wedding Group demonstrates the English writer Elizabeth Taylor's considerable strengths as a novelist, even though it does not quite show her at her bladed best. Nineteen-year-old Cressy has traded life in the somewhat oppressive artistic community where she has grown up for a poky attic room and a gas ring in a nearby village. David, a journalist who lives with his divorced mother, Midge – ostensibly so that she won't be alone, though his life with her is conveniently comfortable – finds himself attracted to this pale, nervy and unworldly girl who takes such delight in the fluorescent glare of burger bars and service station cafes.

It's not long before they marry, yet even after the wedding Midge remains a constant presence in both their lives, exerting a hold over the girl that only intensifies when Cressy becomes pregnant. Having bravely left behind an existence she found stifling, Cressy now finds herself in a different sort of trap.

Taylor deftly illustrates the dynamics at play between these three characters: Cressy becomes slighter and more insubstantial as the novel progresses, her early edge of wilfulness almost totally blunted, while Midge becomes increasingly dominant.

In terms of narrative, the novel is elegant and unhurried, full of carefully written dialogue and delicate, telling detail. This precision of tone does not however quite carry through to the depiction of Cressy's enigmatic artist grandfather. Taylor offers tantalising glimpses of this commanding figure and his extended family but the thread feels sketched in and uncertain in comparison to the domestic scenes.

Though not Taylor's strongest novel, it allows us a glimpse of what she is capable of: her wry humour, her ability to sculpt character through dialogue and her eye for both the light and shade of human relationships.