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liralen's review against another edition
4.0
Barrington was nineteen when her parents died—nineteen and utterly unprepared for their loss. At loose ends, and in no small part blaming herself for not having been there to save them, she moved to Spain, where nobody knew her and where she could piece her life back together.
Lifesaving was published long after their death and long after the bulk of the events of the book, and that distance has served Barrington well. Most of the time her grief is solely in the background, informing her actions but taking a very small role itself. Gradually she is able to look at it more directly—at loss and at guilt and at the now what of the story. She grapples also with her sexuality and the fact that she'll never have to, or be able to, come out to her parents. Better, while she doesn't spare herself, she looks back upon her younger self with compassion.
Thoughtful book, nicely done. I made the mistake of reading this a few weeks before a Channel crossing by ferry (to be fair, I didn't know I would be making said crossing when I read the book), and if you're boat-nervous as I am I really can't recommend that, but it made for a worthwhile read.
Later this scene became so familiar that it was almost invisible. It was hard them to recapture this first impression: how foreign yet how comfortable it all seemed. How much I was an outsider, yet how immediately I knew I belonged. (37)
Though I certainly didn't think about it at the time, I now see that I was meant to agree [that no girl is tough like a boy]: to giggle like a girl, maybe to argue ineffectively and defer to his masculinity. I suppose this was just one of several openings he created through which I could have embarked upon a spectacular but doomed affair. But I never saw the possibility—at least, not on those terms. I didn't have it in me to giggle and assent to the assumption of my feminine weakness. (61)
In those days I looked at my life as if it were a novel or a movie, in which I was the star.... These stories kept me living in a present I could make up as I went along; there was no room in them for the past. (86)
Most people don't have safe opportunities to feel. (97)
Lifesaving was published long after their death and long after the bulk of the events of the book, and that distance has served Barrington well. Most of the time her grief is solely in the background, informing her actions but taking a very small role itself. Gradually she is able to look at it more directly—at loss and at guilt and at the now what of the story. She grapples also with her sexuality and the fact that she'll never have to, or be able to, come out to her parents. Better, while she doesn't spare herself, she looks back upon her younger self with compassion.
Thoughtful book, nicely done. I made the mistake of reading this a few weeks before a Channel crossing by ferry (to be fair, I didn't know I would be making said crossing when I read the book), and if you're boat-nervous as I am I really can't recommend that, but it made for a worthwhile read.
Later this scene became so familiar that it was almost invisible. It was hard them to recapture this first impression: how foreign yet how comfortable it all seemed. How much I was an outsider, yet how immediately I knew I belonged. (37)
Though I certainly didn't think about it at the time, I now see that I was meant to agree [that no girl is tough like a boy]: to giggle like a girl, maybe to argue ineffectively and defer to his masculinity. I suppose this was just one of several openings he created through which I could have embarked upon a spectacular but doomed affair. But I never saw the possibility—at least, not on those terms. I didn't have it in me to giggle and assent to the assumption of my feminine weakness. (61)
In those days I looked at my life as if it were a novel or a movie, in which I was the star.... These stories kept me living in a present I could make up as I went along; there was no room in them for the past. (86)
Most people don't have safe opportunities to feel. (97)
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