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

5.0

As heartbreaking as this novel is, it also makes me less afraid of growing old. Watching the world alternately fade and sharpen through the eyes of 88-year-old Lady Slane—even as she dwells on her regrets and missed opportunities—had a strangely calming effect on me. I felt the "dreamworld" of achievement and enterprise, action and compromise, fall away from me as it did from her. This is a magnificent examination of how contemplation (spiritual action, external inaction) is sometimes the only thing that can brush away those inner cobwebs—revealing truer selves and realities the moment we stop, settle a chair in the grass, and listen.

Just beautiful.