Eva Trout (novel) why Iseult took the gun in exchange for the typewriter she left to Eric, Iseult states that it might be a matter of a "Hedda Gabler complex." In this play written by Henrik Ibsen, Hedda hands in a gun to another character to assist him in committing suicide. Eva Trout (novel) Eva Trout is Elizabeth Bowen's final novel and was shortlisted for the 1970 Booker Prize. First published in 1968, it is about a young woman—the —who, abandoned by her mother just after her birth, raised by nurses and nannies and educated by governesses all hired by her millionaire father,
Hedda Gabler father. She then burns the manuscript and tells George she has destroyed it to secure their future. When the news comes that Eilert has indeed killed himself, George and Thea are determined to try to reconstruct his book from Eilert's notes, which Thea has kept. Hedda is shocked to discover from Judge Brack that Eilert's death, in a brothel, was messy and probably accidental; this "ridiculous and vile" death contrasts with the "beautiful and free" one that Hedda had imagined for him. Worse, Brack knows the origins of the pistol. He tells Hedda that if he reveals what he knows,