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reallifereading 's review for:
All Passion Spent
by Vita Sackville-West
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.