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I reread this after reading The Birthday Party & The Room: Two Plays just the other day and it's a natural progression for both Pinter and the reader. The decrepit boardinghouses of the two earlier plays have become an old family home; the characters are more developed; the dialogue is richer and both more and less nuanced. The woman is still a focal point, but she no longer jabbers to herself because the men in her life tune her out: she is reflective, quietly assertive, and silent on her own behalf when their sordid needs arise and they want an answer from her.

I first read this for a class over thirty years ago and I have no memory of what my 18- or 19-year-old self thought of it (or what I was told to think of it). I reread my now cover-less (due to this read) copy from then and could see I'd bracketed a few lines (even back then I hated the look of underlining or, even worse, highlighting) and made a minimal amount of notes in the margins. Next to a speech by Teddy (the homecoming son) I'd written "he's like Clov, not Hamm" -- a reference to Beckett's Endgame, which maybe I read for the same class.

This was the first Pinter I read, but not the last, and I consider him one of my favorite playwrights, so something must've gone right in the course, whatever it was called and whoever the professor was. Perhaps he was the old Jesuit priest from Ireland that also taught me Joyce. He loved James Joyce and disliked Joyce Cary -- we only read The Horse's Mouth so he could criticize it, it seemed to me -- or was that me who didn't like the Cary, or was that me because of him. Sorry for the ramble, as this is not one of Pinter's so-called memory plays, but even here truth is malleable and memory does not unlock it.