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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
"It had never occurred to him that she might prefer simply to be herself."
Sackville-West's Lady Slane fascinates in this short volume as she reflects on a life of measured happiness and unnoticed personal sacrifice. Peppered with moments of unexpected joy and beautifully articulate description of the things women leave behind to take their 'proper' roles, it moves forward by looking back and seems to find satisfying closure, despite starting and finishing with the end of a life.
Sackville-West's Lady Slane fascinates in this short volume as she reflects on a life of measured happiness and unnoticed personal sacrifice. Peppered with moments of unexpected joy and beautifully articulate description of the things women leave behind to take their 'proper' roles, it moves forward by looking back and seems to find satisfying closure, despite starting and finishing with the end of a life.
This is such a beautiful book. The emotions and feelings within it are so real. The story is wonderful. I'm so glad my mom recommended it to me, but I'm sorry it took me so long to finally read. I wish I could read this for the first time again.
emotional
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
It's a pleasant read, but also comes across a bit as Virginia Woolf Lite.
rich old lady hates on her kids, buys a house, inherits a fortune and reflects on life. felt real and slow and different and, at times, difficult to relate to. lady slane is quite likeable, though.
reflective
relaxing
sad
amazingg, each sentiments written was not at all preachy and consciously trying to be sentimental that its gets mushy
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
"But what was happiness? Had she been happy? That was a strange, clicking word to have coined – meaning something definite to the whole English-speaking race – a strange clicking word with its short vowel and its spitting double p’s and its pert tip-tilted y at the end, to express in two syllables a whole summary of life"
I might be committing some literary heresy in making the next sentence. I found the writing to be slightly reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's. I freely confess my ignorance to knowing much about either of these two authors. I've only just begun to read and focus on their works and lives. Perhaps their closeness allowed for this to occur in All Passion Spent. I think I'll be reading [b:Orlando|35451292|Orlando|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1497703203l/35451292._SY75_.jpg|6057225] very shortly as I gather Woolf based on the character on Sackville-West writing her a letter requesting to do so. What made me wonder at the similarity is the gentle flow of Lady Slane's thoughts in this novel. I truly felt I was floating in the pool of her mind. The flights of ideas and observations as the eighty eight year reflects seemed so Woolf like... but without the utter abstractness that I've found in Woolf's writing.
There are so many themes to unpack in this beautifully written novel. Recently widowed, Lady Slane, packs up from her home in Elm Park Gardens and rents a home in Hampstead. Her atrocious and horrible children don't approve but as they have the gotten her jewels and the material allotment due to them, don't put up much of a fuss. The reader is then privy to Lady Slane's thoughts on her youth and giving up her dream to be an artist to her husband on their marriage, her metamorphosis into the proper society wife of the Viceroy, and subsequent aging. All the while the story flows as an old forgotten friend enters Lady Slane's life and transforms the her time spent.
I think one of the most beautiful passages due its poignance is this in the novel: it's lengthy but I loved the last sentence.
She remembered how, crossing the Persian desert with Henry, their cart had been escorted by flocks of butterflies, white and yellow, which danced on either side and overhead and all around them, now flying ahead in a concerted movement, now returning to accompany them, amused as it were to restrain their swift frivolity to a flitting around this lumbering conveyance, but still unable to suit their pace to such sobriety, so, to relieve their impatience, soaring up into the air, or dipping between the very axles, coming out on the other side before the horses had had time to put down another hoof; making, all the while, little smuts of shadow on the sand, like little black anchors dropped, tethering them by invisible cables to earth, but dragged about with the same capricious swiftness, obliged to follow; and she remembered thinking, lulled by the monotonous progression that trailed after the sun from dawn to dusk, like a plough that should pursue the sun in one straight slow furrow round and round the world – she remembered thinking that this was something like her own life, following Henry Holland like the sun, but every now and then moving into a cloud of butterflies which were her own irreverent, irrelevant thoughts, darting and dancing, but altering the pace of the progression not by one tittle; never brushing the carriage with their wings; flickering always, and evading; sometimes rushing on ahead, but returning again to tease and to show off, darting between the axles; having an independent and a lovely life; a flock of ragamuffins skimming above the surface of the desert and around the trundling wagon; but Henry, who was travelling on a tour of investigation, could only say ‘Terrible, the ophthalmia among these people – I must really do something about it,’ and, knowing that he was right and would speak to the missionaries, she had withdrawn her attention from the butterflies and transferred it to her duty, determining that when they reached Yezd or Shiraz, or wherever it might be, she also would take the missionaries’ wives to task about the ophthalmia in the villages and would make arrangements for a further supply of boracic to be sent out from England.
But, perversely, the flittering of the butterflies had always remained more important.
Lady Slane had the soul of an artist and poet. Always finding beauty and meaning in the world dominated by her husband. I found it rather sad that she got to emerge as that flittering butterfly so late in life. But still, she fluttered her wings and had an independent, lovely life.
I might be committing some literary heresy in making the next sentence. I found the writing to be slightly reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's. I freely confess my ignorance to knowing much about either of these two authors. I've only just begun to read and focus on their works and lives. Perhaps their closeness allowed for this to occur in All Passion Spent. I think I'll be reading [b:Orlando|35451292|Orlando|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1497703203l/35451292._SY75_.jpg|6057225] very shortly as I gather Woolf based on the character on Sackville-West writing her a letter requesting to do so. What made me wonder at the similarity is the gentle flow of Lady Slane's thoughts in this novel. I truly felt I was floating in the pool of her mind. The flights of ideas and observations as the eighty eight year reflects seemed so Woolf like... but without the utter abstractness that I've found in Woolf's writing.
There are so many themes to unpack in this beautifully written novel. Recently widowed, Lady Slane, packs up from her home in Elm Park Gardens and rents a home in Hampstead. Her atrocious and horrible children don't approve but as they have the gotten her jewels and the material allotment due to them, don't put up much of a fuss. The reader is then privy to Lady Slane's thoughts on her youth and giving up her dream to be an artist to her husband on their marriage, her metamorphosis into the proper society wife of the Viceroy, and subsequent aging. All the while the story flows as an old forgotten friend enters Lady Slane's life and transforms the her time spent.
I think one of the most beautiful passages due its poignance is this in the novel: it's lengthy but I loved the last sentence.
She remembered how, crossing the Persian desert with Henry, their cart had been escorted by flocks of butterflies, white and yellow, which danced on either side and overhead and all around them, now flying ahead in a concerted movement, now returning to accompany them, amused as it were to restrain their swift frivolity to a flitting around this lumbering conveyance, but still unable to suit their pace to such sobriety, so, to relieve their impatience, soaring up into the air, or dipping between the very axles, coming out on the other side before the horses had had time to put down another hoof; making, all the while, little smuts of shadow on the sand, like little black anchors dropped, tethering them by invisible cables to earth, but dragged about with the same capricious swiftness, obliged to follow; and she remembered thinking, lulled by the monotonous progression that trailed after the sun from dawn to dusk, like a plough that should pursue the sun in one straight slow furrow round and round the world – she remembered thinking that this was something like her own life, following Henry Holland like the sun, but every now and then moving into a cloud of butterflies which were her own irreverent, irrelevant thoughts, darting and dancing, but altering the pace of the progression not by one tittle; never brushing the carriage with their wings; flickering always, and evading; sometimes rushing on ahead, but returning again to tease and to show off, darting between the axles; having an independent and a lovely life; a flock of ragamuffins skimming above the surface of the desert and around the trundling wagon; but Henry, who was travelling on a tour of investigation, could only say ‘Terrible, the ophthalmia among these people – I must really do something about it,’ and, knowing that he was right and would speak to the missionaries, she had withdrawn her attention from the butterflies and transferred it to her duty, determining that when they reached Yezd or Shiraz, or wherever it might be, she also would take the missionaries’ wives to task about the ophthalmia in the villages and would make arrangements for a further supply of boracic to be sent out from England.
But, perversely, the flittering of the butterflies had always remained more important.
Lady Slane had the soul of an artist and poet. Always finding beauty and meaning in the world dominated by her husband. I found it rather sad that she got to emerge as that flittering butterfly so late in life. But still, she fluttered her wings and had an independent, lovely life.
Deceptively simple and utterly lovely. This book is a treasure and I will read it repeatedly for the rest of my life.