I finished the book yesterday and also have a lot of thoughts to sort through. I find that books like this tend to leave me with a lingering arrangement of thoughts and feelings that tend to change or rearrange themselves in the weeks following. Overall, I can say with confidence that I really enjoyed this book. I knew nothing of the author prior to reading it and didn’t read any additional material at the same time – no letters, no poetry, no diary, no Wikipedia. Perhaps my feelings would similar had I, but I really didn’t find Vera to be all that self-absorbed. For me she seemed to transform from having a rather small, self-absorbed view of her life at Buxton and even Oxford, to someone, almost prematurely, forced to expand her world view.
I was impressed with her work ethic and her self-awareness, particularly during her time in Malta and regarding her decision to leave Malta. Perhaps I’m just a sentimental sap (trust me, this is something I’m not often accused of) but losing a fiancé, a close brother and two other close friends when barely into her 20s, just plain broke my heart. Her ridiculously superficial parents seemed peripheral at best in terms of providing support and influence. And yet, Vera seems to me to strike an impressive balance of interior introspection regarding her personal plight, and the larger meaning of the chaos she’s living through.
I love this:
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But I know that those things will never come back. I may see the rocks again, and smell the flowers, and watch the dawn sunshine chase the shadows from the old sulphur-coloured walls, but the light that sprang from the heightened consciousness of wartime, the glory seen by the enraptured ingenuous eyes of twenty-two, will be upon them no more. I am a girl no longer, and the world, for all its excitements of chosen work and individualistic play, has grown tame in comparison with Malta during those years of our anguish
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I hate to admit this, but I every time Vera’s father made an appearance he was Hugh Bonneville, complete with that annoying Downton Abbyish look of perplexity. When he wrote to Vera “we can no longer manage without you and it’s now you’re duty to leave France and return to Kensington,” I just about tossed my ereader off the porch and onto the street. The 22 year-old Vera obviously cares deeply about her family responsibilities, but what a dilemma.
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What was I to do? I wondered desperately. There was my family, confidently demanding my presence, and here was the offensive, which made every pair of experienced hands worth ten pairs under normal conditions.
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I’m still sorting through my thoughts of the post-war Vera. I’m sure I’ll figure out how I feel later. This was a long book and in some ways I wish that it ended after Chapter 10. The rest could have been a sequel. From Chapter 11 on it felt less like a “testament of youth” and more like something else.