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A review by foggy_rosamund
All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West
4.0
Lady Slane, the main character of this short novel, has lived to help her husband and to care for her children. When she is 88, her husband dies, and she is, for the first time, able to make her own decisions. This is not a happy novel; neither, as the blurb suggests, is it about rebelliousness in old age. Lady Slane manages, for a brief period, to carve out a small life for herself, on her own, in Hampstead, where she can spend time as she sees fit, and think about her long life. This is a novel about Lady Slane's thwarted potential, and the agony women go through in order to fit into the domestic and social life expected of them. It is very melancholy, but it also shows the triumph of character and of retaining personhood.