changeablelandscape's review
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
I was 14 when the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Aspects of Love came out -- based on this book -- and I was absolutely in love with it even though it was full of things I didn't understand. I got a copy of the book as a gift soon after, and read it over and over and over through a number of years; it was also full of things I didn't understand, being from 1955 and written by someone born in 1892 who was full of the assumptions of an upper-class white British guy. Eventually I discovered the Bloomsbury Group and learned all kinds of facts about Garnett and many other people and time passed and now, finally, I have read this book again! And -- wow. It is very Freudian in its understandings of people and how they relate to each other and the role of sexual desire in human life; there's only one type of love (sexual) and when parents love their children they of course deny the sexual part of their love, but it has to come out as jealousy and posessiveness, which is why fathers don't want their daughters to have boyfriends, etc etc etc. I am not sure what Garnett thought he was doing here, or if he really believed this in his personal life, but he did marry his male ex-lover's daughter, so.....
I am not sorry I read it one last time with a lot of attention and care, but having done so, I think I am safely done with it!
I am not sorry I read it one last time with a lot of attention and care, but having done so, I think I am safely done with it!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship
Spoiler
There are several adult/minor relationships here, one between a 17-year-old boy and a mid-20s woman (which is sexual) and one between a man in his early 30s and a 13-year-old girl, which involves sexual attraction but no actual sex. None of this is written in an explicit way, but they are central to the book.wormz's review
2.0
david garnett, who married his ex-boyfriend’s illegitimate daughter (and planned to do so ever since she was a baby), writing a novel about a guy having feelings for the 13 year old daughter of his ex-girlfriend and his uncle: nobody will ever suspect a thing
Content Warnings
Moderate: Pedophilia, Adult/minor relationship, and Incest
More...