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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
Sweet, lovely, nostalgic, odd little book, where nothing much happens. Lady Slane's fatalism about her "lot in life" makes me grateful there was never any question about what I was going to do with my life. I was going to do whatever I damn well pleased. Thanks feminism!
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Some older books remind me of vintage photographs: showing a frame of a bygone time so alien to the modern reader that they can only be consumed as historical artifacts. That was all that I expected from All Passion Spent. How wrong I was!
This has some of the most beautiful prose in English language fiction. I remember particularly a passage about butterflies. I read this book when I was a 19- year-old college student.
I feel like this should have the subtitle 'Or, Why Having Children Is Actually The Worst'.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I read this with the Cornflower Book Group: http://cornflower.typepad.com/domestic_arts_blog/about-the-cornflower-book-group/
And this is what I thought then: I love novels that show me something that's true about life, and in All Passion Spent Lady Slane's relinquishing of the life she longs to live, as a painter, rings very true. There are still, even now, quite a few female artists who have never married or had children and I wonder if that is at least partly for fear that the spark of their passion for their art will be extinguished by necessary domesticity; at least partly for fear that they will never find the time to paint, write or compose if surrounded by other people who need their love and attention? At least partly for fear that, "in such a programme [Lord Slane's life] ... there [would be no] room for a studio".
But the gift that Lady Slane gives her great-granddaughter at the end, is wonderfully redemptive and perhaps prescient about an age to come. The gift Lady Slane makes to her namesake, Deborah, is priceless - and the fact that she didn't leave her great-granddaughter her inherited millions underlines that. I thought All Passion Spent a beautiful delicate flower of a book. It is poignant and understated and far more powerful than its simply written prose and relatively short length suggest. The characters are wonderfully observed and I agree with Fay about Mr Bucktrout's eccentricities - I particularly loved his name and his pointing of his toe to underline what he says.
I still think those things now. Here's the link to that post: http://cornflower.typepad.com/domestic_arts_blog/2007/12/all-passion-spe.html?cid=6a00d8341c6f9553ef00e54fb944558834#comment-6a00d8341c6f9553ef00e54fb944558834
And this is what I thought then: I love novels that show me something that's true about life, and in All Passion Spent Lady Slane's relinquishing of the life she longs to live, as a painter, rings very true. There are still, even now, quite a few female artists who have never married or had children and I wonder if that is at least partly for fear that the spark of their passion for their art will be extinguished by necessary domesticity; at least partly for fear that they will never find the time to paint, write or compose if surrounded by other people who need their love and attention? At least partly for fear that, "in such a programme [Lord Slane's life] ... there [would be no] room for a studio".
But the gift that Lady Slane gives her great-granddaughter at the end, is wonderfully redemptive and perhaps prescient about an age to come. The gift Lady Slane makes to her namesake, Deborah, is priceless - and the fact that she didn't leave her great-granddaughter her inherited millions underlines that. I thought All Passion Spent a beautiful delicate flower of a book. It is poignant and understated and far more powerful than its simply written prose and relatively short length suggest. The characters are wonderfully observed and I agree with Fay about Mr Bucktrout's eccentricities - I particularly loved his name and his pointing of his toe to underline what he says.
I still think those things now. Here's the link to that post: http://cornflower.typepad.com/domestic_arts_blog/2007/12/all-passion-spe.html?cid=6a00d8341c6f9553ef00e54fb944558834#comment-6a00d8341c6f9553ef00e54fb944558834
It begins with a death.
The children gather – although children hardly seems the right word to describe this batch of elder-folk themselves, who have children and grandchildren of their own.
However, they are indeed the man’s children so children they shall be.
The children gather. They discuss in hushed tones not so much their late father but their widowed mother. Making plans, planning her future. Who she should live with. What she should do. Forgetting, or perhaps never really knowing, that she is a person, not just a helpless widow whose mind needs to be made up for her.
So while it begins with a death, Vita Sackville-West’s All Passion Spent is hardly a sad story. Instead it is a rather ticklish one. It doesn’t make you burst out in a guffaw but snickers are inevitable, hidden behind that cup of tea or lace hanky or gloved hand.
I suppose there’s always that hesitation to read a book about an elderly lady. I know I would have never picked it up just a few short years ago. But I’ve since learnt that older women sometimes make delightful characters (take Elizabeth Moon’s Ofelia in Remnant Population and Downton Abbey’s Dowager Countess played by Maggie Smith). All Passion Spent‘s Lady Slane, – and the elderly children of hers who make all kinds of assumptions and presumptions and other sumptions about their mother – make this book quite a delight.
The children gather – although children hardly seems the right word to describe this batch of elder-folk themselves, who have children and grandchildren of their own.
However, they are indeed the man’s children so children they shall be.
The children gather. They discuss in hushed tones not so much their late father but their widowed mother. Making plans, planning her future. Who she should live with. What she should do. Forgetting, or perhaps never really knowing, that she is a person, not just a helpless widow whose mind needs to be made up for her.
So while it begins with a death, Vita Sackville-West’s All Passion Spent is hardly a sad story. Instead it is a rather ticklish one. It doesn’t make you burst out in a guffaw but snickers are inevitable, hidden behind that cup of tea or lace hanky or gloved hand.
I suppose there’s always that hesitation to read a book about an elderly lady. I know I would have never picked it up just a few short years ago. But I’ve since learnt that older women sometimes make delightful characters (take Elizabeth Moon’s Ofelia in Remnant Population and Downton Abbey’s Dowager Countess played by Maggie Smith). All Passion Spent‘s Lady Slane, – and the elderly children of hers who make all kinds of assumptions and presumptions and other sumptions about their mother – make this book quite a delight.