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floderrida 's review for:
Love's Work
by Gillian Rose
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
SERIOUSLY. Rose's prose (hehe) is dense, yet powerful (had to look up every other word), this book has profoundly changed the way, I think about love (and self and friendship and illness, and and and....).
”However satisfying writing is – that mix of discipline and miracle, which leaves you in control, even when what appears on the page has emerged from regions beyond your control – it is a very poor substitute indeed for the joy and the agony of loving. Of there being someone who loves and desires you, and he glories in his love and desire, and you glory in his ever-strange being, which comes up against you, and disappears, again and again, surprising you with difficulties and with bounty. To lose this is the greatest loss, a loss for which there is no consolation. There can only be that twin passion - the passion of faith.”
"To spend the night with someone is agapē: it is ethical. For you must move with him and with yourself from the arms of the one twin to the abyss of the other. This shared journey, unsure yet close, honesty embracing dishonesty, changes the relationship. It may not be a marriage, but it will be sacramental even without benefit of sacraments. To navigate this together is to achieve the mundane: to be present to each other, both at the point of difficult ecstasy and at the point of abyssal infinity, brings you into the shared care of the finite world."
"So what does bitter innocence claim? The Beloved says that she remains steadfast and consistent, unwavering in her love: the Lover is the inconsistent one. The Beloves says she is bewildered and deserted: the Lover appears indifferent equally to his withdrawal and to her bereavement. The Beloved remembers not only disproportionate joy, but the fantasy of the future pledged: 'You are for me a vast, open space of unpressurised love.' He covers his eyes with index finger and thumb: 'I hate conversations like this.'"
Oh God, so good, right? I am the Beloved and I say: "”The more innocent I sound, the more enraged and invested I am.” It all wells up inside me and it makes me so frustrated. Gillian Rose provides a language to such feelings: "Let me be destroyed. For that is the only way I may have a chance of surviving."
”However satisfying writing is – that mix of discipline and miracle, which leaves you in control, even when what appears on the page has emerged from regions beyond your control – it is a very poor substitute indeed for the joy and the agony of loving. Of there being someone who loves and desires you, and he glories in his love and desire, and you glory in his ever-strange being, which comes up against you, and disappears, again and again, surprising you with difficulties and with bounty. To lose this is the greatest loss, a loss for which there is no consolation. There can only be that twin passion - the passion of faith.”
"To spend the night with someone is agapē: it is ethical. For you must move with him and with yourself from the arms of the one twin to the abyss of the other. This shared journey, unsure yet close, honesty embracing dishonesty, changes the relationship. It may not be a marriage, but it will be sacramental even without benefit of sacraments. To navigate this together is to achieve the mundane: to be present to each other, both at the point of difficult ecstasy and at the point of abyssal infinity, brings you into the shared care of the finite world."
"So what does bitter innocence claim? The Beloved says that she remains steadfast and consistent, unwavering in her love: the Lover is the inconsistent one. The Beloves says she is bewildered and deserted: the Lover appears indifferent equally to his withdrawal and to her bereavement. The Beloved remembers not only disproportionate joy, but the fantasy of the future pledged: 'You are for me a vast, open space of unpressurised love.' He covers his eyes with index finger and thumb: 'I hate conversations like this.'"
Oh God, so good, right? I am the Beloved and I say: "”The more innocent I sound, the more enraged and invested I am.” It all wells up inside me and it makes me so frustrated. Gillian Rose provides a language to such feelings: "Let me be destroyed. For that is the only way I may have a chance of surviving."
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Death, Medical content