A review by wealhtheow
All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West

5.0

The Lady Slane’s husband dies at the ripe age of 92, leaving her a widow with a small pension, six children (all over the age of 60), and innumerable grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Imagine her family’s surprise when this venerable and venerated old woman takes up a small house in London and asks her relatives not to visit her. It’s a quiet, beautifully told vignette of a woman’s last year of life. She had dreamt of being a painter, and retains an artist’s eye, but subsumed herself in her husband and children, as was expected of her, rather than buck convention. It’s a tragedy, but society is not blamed so much as her own love for her late husband.