The Living and the Dead is a novel by Australian Nobel Prize laureate Patrick White, his second published book (1941).

Chapter 2 takes the reader several decades earlier, where a young Kitty Goose begins to find her way through England's upper classes.

As the Spanish Civil War rises in the conscience of British society, the Standishes are forced to face their inner dissatisfactions.

Catherine, who finds herself irrelevant in a much-changed world, pursues a romance with the younger Wally Collins, an American musician.

The relationship is severed when Wally loses interest in Catherine, who spills her emotions whilst drunk at a fashionable party.

He distances himself from both Muriel Raphael, an artistic socialite, and Connie Tiarks, an unattractive but devoted childhood friend.

Patrick White won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973, however, The Living and the Dead is not usually included among his better-known works.