What do you think?
All That Heaven Allows
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 26, 2025
All That Heaven Allows by Edna Lee
Eight out of 10
This remarkable film has been included on The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list:
https://www.listchallenges.com/new-yo...
The message seems to be clear, simple and almost universally known and accepted, in the modern age at least.
Nevertheless, even if it works in this romantic drama, there is something to say in favor of relationships between men and women, same sex bonds as well, that are based on similar backgrounds, education levels and interests.
Yes, it is evident that we must decide based on class and other such artificial labels, but psychological and other studies have indicated that we get along best with others who share the same penchant for reading, to give one example.
If one likes to read a lot, the likelihood of his or her getting along with someone who makes a point to avoid reading – like the American simpleton who incredibly leads the world – is slim, to be optimistic.
In All That Heaven Allows, Ron Kirby aka the refined, excellent Rock Hudson is a gardener, working for Cary Scott aka Jane Wyman.
However, he is not an uneducated, unsophisticated blue-collar worker – a situation that I maintain that in most cases would not favor a relationship with another who has studied much more to further his or her education.
The man who cuts branches in the garden of the widow who has two grown up children aspires to a better status.
Although it is somewhat strange to see him always dressed – perhaps with the exception of the night where he has to punch a rude, abusing guest at a party – in a red chequered coat.
The hero invites the widow to a water mill, to see and learn more about trees, gardening.
This is when and where they realize that they share an attraction for each other and decide to meet again.
Nonetheless, the fact that Cary Scott belongs to the “upper class”, a better off community is a block for their bonding.
She invites Ron Kirby to come with her to a party where the guests and host are pretentious, arrogant and relatively wealthy people.
They snub their noses at the intruder, who is only a gardener and therefore destined to remain “inferior” to them.
When one of them sees the audacious Cary and the man she has brought along, he thinks this is a signal of her libertine concepts and he is offended that she had refused his advances.
This loathsome man tries again to force himself on the woman who must accept him, since she had come with someone so obviously less significant than he thinks he is, pushing and trying to kiss her.
Ron storms into the room when he sees the scene and promptly knocks the abuser, who seems to be in serious danger.
The rest of the party, instead of perceiving the reality and condemning the real perpetrator, concentrates on the one who is different, an outsider and hence blame him.
Alas, apart from this stupid, preposterous society, the family of the heroine is also against her penchant.
Both her daughter and son are aghast at the perspective of being close to such a humble man.
People in the town who claim her mother had had an affair with Kirby, even before her late husband was dead insult the girl.
Cary Scott is sure she has to give up her happiness for that of her children and thus separate from the man she loves.
Again, the idea that love conquers all could be the mantra of this good film, perhaps one of the best 1,000 ever made.
Nevertheless, it has not convinced the under signed that this is true, especially if we consider another psychological, perhaps two effects:
The Honeymoon Effect and The Coolidge Effect
The first one purports that at the end of a period of about two years of relationship, most bonds would face a challenge and even if one is married to one extreme beauty – the example of Hale Berry has been given – a wonderful human being, there is still the attraction, the impulse to have an affair with someone else – The Coolidge Effect – even if that is not necessarily what would happen…people remain married and in love with each other for decades, while others divorce…
Eight out of 10
This remarkable film has been included on The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list:
https://www.listchallenges.com/new-yo...
The message seems to be clear, simple and almost universally known and accepted, in the modern age at least.
Nevertheless, even if it works in this romantic drama, there is something to say in favor of relationships between men and women, same sex bonds as well, that are based on similar backgrounds, education levels and interests.
Yes, it is evident that we must decide based on class and other such artificial labels, but psychological and other studies have indicated that we get along best with others who share the same penchant for reading, to give one example.
If one likes to read a lot, the likelihood of his or her getting along with someone who makes a point to avoid reading – like the American simpleton who incredibly leads the world – is slim, to be optimistic.
In All That Heaven Allows, Ron Kirby aka the refined, excellent Rock Hudson is a gardener, working for Cary Scott aka Jane Wyman.
However, he is not an uneducated, unsophisticated blue-collar worker – a situation that I maintain that in most cases would not favor a relationship with another who has studied much more to further his or her education.
The man who cuts branches in the garden of the widow who has two grown up children aspires to a better status.
Although it is somewhat strange to see him always dressed – perhaps with the exception of the night where he has to punch a rude, abusing guest at a party – in a red chequered coat.
The hero invites the widow to a water mill, to see and learn more about trees, gardening.
This is when and where they realize that they share an attraction for each other and decide to meet again.
Nonetheless, the fact that Cary Scott belongs to the “upper class”, a better off community is a block for their bonding.
She invites Ron Kirby to come with her to a party where the guests and host are pretentious, arrogant and relatively wealthy people.
They snub their noses at the intruder, who is only a gardener and therefore destined to remain “inferior” to them.
When one of them sees the audacious Cary and the man she has brought along, he thinks this is a signal of her libertine concepts and he is offended that she had refused his advances.
This loathsome man tries again to force himself on the woman who must accept him, since she had come with someone so obviously less significant than he thinks he is, pushing and trying to kiss her.
Ron storms into the room when he sees the scene and promptly knocks the abuser, who seems to be in serious danger.
The rest of the party, instead of perceiving the reality and condemning the real perpetrator, concentrates on the one who is different, an outsider and hence blame him.
Alas, apart from this stupid, preposterous society, the family of the heroine is also against her penchant.
Both her daughter and son are aghast at the perspective of being close to such a humble man.
People in the town who claim her mother had had an affair with Kirby, even before her late husband was dead insult the girl.
Cary Scott is sure she has to give up her happiness for that of her children and thus separate from the man she loves.
Again, the idea that love conquers all could be the mantra of this good film, perhaps one of the best 1,000 ever made.
Nevertheless, it has not convinced the under signed that this is true, especially if we consider another psychological, perhaps two effects:
The Honeymoon Effect and The Coolidge Effect
The first one purports that at the end of a period of about two years of relationship, most bonds would face a challenge and even if one is married to one extreme beauty – the example of Hale Berry has been given – a wonderful human being, there is still the attraction, the impulse to have an affair with someone else – The Coolidge Effect – even if that is not necessarily what would happen…people remain married and in love with each other for decades, while others divorce…
June 1, 2026
There’s an interesting tension between the two characters as Cary goes from overly familiar with Ron—overcompensating for her discomfort with their class disparity—to fulfilling (performing?) her social role as the wiser, older, almost maternal figure to Ron—likely to bury her romanic feelings for him. He responds by teasing her for the former and becoming angered at the latter. This builds on the book’s recurring idea of societal artifice, wherein Ron rejects these inauthentic relations that Cary’s trying to create/forge with him (for them?).† That kind of small character detail is missing from the 1955 film adaptation. The characters of Sirk’s film are blandly amiable and comparatively more subdued: film-Ron lacks his book counterpart's edge, and film-Cary’s personality and aliveness are tamped down, which resultantly undercuts the story’s emphasis on the small, stifling box Cary’s family and society would rather put her in. All this to say, I am always left slightly wanting when watching the movie version and even more so after having read the book.
The novel explores marriage as ownership—“the ancient concept of a woman as property”—where a wife’s life and identity is tightly tied to her husband and should not be untied, even in death; anything else would be seen as an insult to her late husband. Toward the end of the novel, after having broken things off with Ron, Cary almost dies, trapped alone in her house; dizzy and delirious, she then has an epiphany and rejects the “dark tomb in the house he had built” where everyone would prefer to bury her away. “It was wrong to waste life, to let life spill wantonly on sterile ground. It was wrong to turn away from life toward—what?” Whereas in the movie, it is not Cary but Ron who almost dies, which to me plays more as broad melodrama and is less impactful because it’s less about Cary. The heart of the conflict is not about Cary losing Ron, it’s about losing herself, which, to Cary, would be an “imitation of death.” And so I prefer the book’s ending which, while admittedly being too on the nose, at least gestures at the idea of how Cary feels about her life and about herself as an individual, no longer going along with everyone “consigning her to a dead husband's funeral pyre.” This ending doesn’t completely land either, however, because what do we really know about Cary as an individual. A fair critique of the book is that Cary never develops any interests or ambitions or passions outside of Ron, her kids, and Sara. So, even in the end, in a book purportedly about a woman’s individuality, it’s hard to describe Cary and what she wants outside of a man. She even defines herself in those terms: “As for who I’ll be, I’ll be his wife.”§ She is not afforded personhood outside of being a wife or mother. Obviously All that Heaven Allows isn’t the most progressive or feminist book and it’s not pretending to be (Cary explicitly calls herself a conservative and conventional woman), but there ends up being this dissonance between the book’s critique of how society misogynistically constrains and defines a woman by a man and the book’s ending where Cary chooses to define herself by a man. At the end of the day, Cary just wants to freely choose her husband and her life, but effectively what she’s doing is just choosing a different man to be the center, the totality of her world.
My notes:
†Faux politeness quotes:
• The title: You can’t have everything you want, there is a price to pay and trade-offs to make. Because that is all that heaven allows.
• Cary’s children are marginally less evil here than in the movie: the daughter is genuinely remorseful and insists on calling Ron to fix their mistake; cary thinks the son acts this way because he’s stepping up after his father died and is mimicking him, i.e., I do think in his own way he believes he’s doing the right thing, taking care of and protecting his mother (even if his way is conforming to societal expectations/pressure, but honestly why would he think any differently given how he was raised) Pg. 266: “Ned, of course, had not known when she wanted to marry Ron that he would be leaving home so soon. He had not even known of the chance he would be offered. If he had, perhaps it might have made a difference in his attitude. Or would it?” Her kids ditching her on Christmas / getting engaged / deciding to move away for a new job all reminded me of Dostoevsky quote: “Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing"
• Lol that the big, scandalous age difference is 35 and 42. Acting like he is so youthful and boyish when he’s pushing forty.
• audio commentary argues that Cary “reverts back to the role of nurse or mother” in order for them to be together
• Probably I’m making silly and ignorant assumptions about 1950’s literature, but it was nice and surprising to see sexual desire (especially a woman’s) written about in such plain and unapologetic terms (which is not a knock against the film, because Hays code, see below, etc.): "Later, awakening in the night, she lay for a few minutes watching the fire that had dwindled to steady, lesser flames. She discovered nothing in loving that made her ashamed. She discovered no tinge of regret. Instead she felt immensely moral. A triumphant goodness pervaded her body, as if it had been freed from any possibility of sin land all its devils and evil humors driven out" (pg. 134). Letter from Director of Production Code Administration Geoffrey M. Shurlock to William Gordon of Universal-International Pictures, dated December 29, 1954, pg. 1. Production Code Administration records, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences :
Quotes (goodreads wouldn't let add all my quotes due to character limit, so I saved them all elsewhere):
Pg. 53: The tiredness, the desire for sleep had dissolved. She felt, suddenly, marvelously alive, alert, filled with energy. She would like to go out and walk, she thought, for miles and miles. Walk over the moon-pale fields, under the burnished silver sky. She could not possibly grow tired. Never. She could walk on forever and ever. She was strong. So much stronger than anyone could guess. She would not, of course, go to walk or go anywhere except to bed.
Pg. 72 (immediately thought of Douglas Sirk): With a sweep of more open road before them, Cary felt a buoyant rise of spirits. Her hesitation to come became incomprehensible. She worried too much about doing things, she informed herself, instead of simply doing them. She seemed to see the world with new and vivid clarity: the smoky tangle of woods, the glisten of streams, the distant hazed hills. Even signboards flashed with startling sharpness of color, as if her eyes had been brought into focus after years of clouded vision.
Pg. 126: He laughed sharply, almost angrily. "Enjoy seeing you!" He repeated scornfully. "When I didn't see you I was so damned miserable I wasn't worth shooting. I couldn't think of anything but seeing you. I couldn't stop wondering what you were doing, who you were with. I've never felt like that about anything before. I've never gone through this kind of hell before. That's why I built this-did this work. Breaking my back on this goddamned barn would at least put me to sleep. That's why I want to marry you."
Pg. 135: He frowned. "Breathless and eager," he said. "I’'m not good at this, mind you. Breathless and eager. Slim. Walking as if you might decide to fly instead. Walking with little feet across the grass. I thought no one who looked like you could ever lie or hurt anybody. Not even for their own good."
Pg. 151-152: “It should be easy to be happy. It shouldn't be difficult to be good."
"You're wrong, of course," he told her. "Why should the most valuable things in the world come cheap? They don't, Cary. You have to be ready to pay.”
"With what?"
"With everything, if you have to. But with one thing, at least.”
Pg. 228: ”You wouldn't be changed," she assured him earnestly. "You couldn't be less of a man than you are."
"I could. Right now I'm learning how easy it would be to let myself be changed."
"By whom, Ron?"
"By you," he told her.
Pg. 229: “Being without you is hell, but it's my hell. Not one I've let somebody make for me. Living here, your way, would be a worse hell."
Pg. 232 (reminds me of Love Affair): “He had accepted certain values as worth while and he would not be deterred from them by the complicated temptations of the world. Mick, she recalled, had told her Ron was an idealist. She had not realized this as being so profoundly true. She had thought of him as having vague ideas of an impossible perfection, not dreaming that he was dedicated to achieve as nearly as possible its actuality. She had not understood that Ron was prepared to reject a lesser fulfillment nor that he was so ready to avoid an alternative.”
Pg. 307-309: He had tried, she perceived now, to make her understand that she could not turn her back upon life except at her own peril. The gift of life was conferred only conditionally upon those who accepted willingly the inescapable obligations it imposed. The obligation must not be turned into a perversion of itself, it must not be distorted into a rejection that amounted essentially to an imitation of its opposite. An imitation of death. She saw that many people had wished to deny life to her; her friends and neighbors, her children, even—strangest of all—herself. Perhaps, as Kay had explained, they and she too were impelled, by the ancient concept of a woman as property, to shut her away because she was a widow. To accomplish a result tantamount to consigning her to a dead husband's funeral pyre. Even she had been impelled, by the same thing, to seek a dark tomb in the house he had built. A new thought suddenly occurred to her. Like Mick, she had learned the hard way that it was wrong to waste life, to let life spill wantonly on sterile ground. It was wrong to turn away from life toward—what?…[Life] must be the heroic gamble of precious insecurity, the wonder of change and chance. She had been such a coward, Cary thought. She had been such a foolish coward.
Tree metaphor!
Pg. 23-24: “Oh, I might sell a few. It's not a popular tree. Not many people know about them. They're tender until they get along to five-year growth. Most treemen don't want to risk handling them. They're a slow tree."
"Slow?"
"They take a good many years to mature. They don't shape up until they're about twelve-year-old growths. Before that they look scrubby. They're expensive too. That's against them from the point of view of most nurserymen.
"Goodness, there doesn't seem to be much that isn't against them," she told him. "Twelve years before they begin to shape up! It doesn't seem practical to grow them if they take so long and aren't popular."
"They're worth it.”
Pg. 116-117: “They don't grow like this. They're too tender the first few years. It wouldn't have a chance in a place like this. The first hard frost would kill it."
…"Of course! Someone planted it there after it was old enough to be safe! Someone who realized it was the perfect place; that the tree someday would be wonderful on the edge of the hill–hill and sky and a perfect tree."
…"It's not a bad sort of miracle," he said gently.
Pg. 309: She remembered how Mick had reminded her of Ron's stubborn faithfulness to the blue trees that were sensitive to frost, difficult to grow, slow to give their reward. She had misunderstood. She had believed Mick implied that she made more difficulties than Ron or any man would willingly endure. That she made more trouble than a reasonable man would put up with. It wasn't, she realized now, what Mick had meant at all. He had been talking, not of her, but of Ron.
The novel explores marriage as ownership—“the ancient concept of a woman as property”—where a wife’s life and identity is tightly tied to her husband and should not be untied, even in death; anything else would be seen as an insult to her late husband. Toward the end of the novel, after having broken things off with Ron, Cary almost dies, trapped alone in her house; dizzy and delirious, she then has an epiphany and rejects the “dark tomb in the house he had built” where everyone would prefer to bury her away. “It was wrong to waste life, to let life spill wantonly on sterile ground. It was wrong to turn away from life toward—what?” Whereas in the movie, it is not Cary but Ron who almost dies, which to me plays more as broad melodrama and is less impactful because it’s less about Cary. The heart of the conflict is not about Cary losing Ron, it’s about losing herself, which, to Cary, would be an “imitation of death.” And so I prefer the book’s ending which, while admittedly being too on the nose, at least gestures at the idea of how Cary feels about her life and about herself as an individual, no longer going along with everyone “consigning her to a dead husband's funeral pyre.” This ending doesn’t completely land either, however, because what do we really know about Cary as an individual. A fair critique of the book is that Cary never develops any interests or ambitions or passions outside of Ron, her kids, and Sara. So, even in the end, in a book purportedly about a woman’s individuality, it’s hard to describe Cary and what she wants outside of a man. She even defines herself in those terms: “As for who I’ll be, I’ll be his wife.”§ She is not afforded personhood outside of being a wife or mother. Obviously All that Heaven Allows isn’t the most progressive or feminist book and it’s not pretending to be (Cary explicitly calls herself a conservative and conventional woman), but there ends up being this dissonance between the book’s critique of how society misogynistically constrains and defines a woman by a man and the book’s ending where Cary chooses to define herself by a man. At the end of the day, Cary just wants to freely choose her husband and her life, but effectively what she’s doing is just choosing a different man to be the center, the totality of her world.
My notes:
†Faux politeness quotes:
Pg. 7-8: Now, however, she was left out of it. She had wondered why she was no longer included, feeling at first resentful and hurt, until she learned the cause was not that her friends were less fond of her. The explanation was unintentionally provided by a friend whom she met at Gow's grocery and who apologized for excluding her from a recent dinner party. "I would have loved to have had you, Cary, but there simply wasn't an extra man to be had and I knew you'd be uncomfortable …”…Lacking Harvey, or a man like him to balance her presence at a gathering, she would make it uneven, off balance. Instead of concern for her discomfort, fear that others would be made uncomfortable by her presence caused hostesses to exclude her, she understood. She was an extra woman. She looked up the word "extra" in Webster's and read ruefully: "Denoting beyond, outside of, beyond the scope of ..." So that was what she had become—beyond, outside of—§ Wife/marriage quotes:
Pg. 44: She wondered if Alice would telephone, if they would make plans, if they would get together—or if Alice meant exactly nothing. The encounter was repeated with variations, several times during the evening. Other women stopped to say substantially the same words to her that Alice Marlow had used.
Pg. 59, 60-61: As she had expected, the telephone calls promised at the club did not materialize…It would be childish to resent being left out of Alice's dinner party, she thought driving home, but she recalled Alice's effusive greeting at the club and her promise to telephone and get together. Alice had not mentioned a dinner. A dinner with guinea hen, which meant that to Alice it was an important dinner. An event.
Pg. 270-271: As others came, however, always registering the same surprise, repeating exactly the words they'd spoken the last time they saw her, her doubt of their sincerity deepened. The women were the same women. They had forgotten completely that only a few weeks ago they had performed the same meaningless charade.
Pg. 30: She realized now that it had been the normal and natural way for her to live. Perhaps it was for all, or almost all women; but in her case she felt it to be more intensely true than it might be for others. She had been fulfilled and completed by marriage. She had not, as many women did, required additional fulfillments. Many would consider her limited in this respect. The idea of a career had never entered her head. The few clubs dedicated to the improvement of gardens or civic betterment that she had attended from a sense of duty had left her uninspired. She had been an active member of the P.T.A. but that was for her children and was part of her marriage. Being married, being a mother and a wife, had been her whole existence and she did not share the opinion of outsiders who considered it inadequate.
Pg. 132-133: Why, she wondered, did wives forget how pleasant a word it was when listened to in the proper state of mind? The truth was, so few wives deserved to be married. She was, she recognized now, meant to be a wife. Loving under any other name for her would be unsatisfactory. She could not give herself for a single night, for several nights. The wife that was the essential part of her would not permit betrayal. She was, as she had always been aware, essentially a conservative woman, a conventional woman. She didn't want to be any other kind. And being this kind of woman, she was unable to love without making it the central fact in the arrangement of her life.
Pg. 185: “As for who I’ll be, I’ll be his wife.”
Pg. 243: “For a great many women, for the great majority, marriage is the only satisfactory way of life. You're one of them. To try and deny your way of life is to try and deny life itself.”
• The title: You can’t have everything you want, there is a price to pay and trade-offs to make. Because that is all that heaven allows.
• Cary’s children are marginally less evil here than in the movie: the daughter is genuinely remorseful and insists on calling Ron to fix their mistake; cary thinks the son acts this way because he’s stepping up after his father died and is mimicking him, i.e., I do think in his own way he believes he’s doing the right thing, taking care of and protecting his mother (even if his way is conforming to societal expectations/pressure, but honestly why would he think any differently given how he was raised) Pg. 266: “Ned, of course, had not known when she wanted to marry Ron that he would be leaving home so soon. He had not even known of the chance he would be offered. If he had, perhaps it might have made a difference in his attitude. Or would it?” Her kids ditching her on Christmas / getting engaged / deciding to move away for a new job all reminded me of Dostoevsky quote: “Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing"
• Lol that the big, scandalous age difference is 35 and 42. Acting like he is so youthful and boyish when he’s pushing forty.
• audio commentary argues that Cary “reverts back to the role of nurse or mother” in order for them to be together
• Probably I’m making silly and ignorant assumptions about 1950’s literature, but it was nice and surprising to see sexual desire (especially a woman’s) written about in such plain and unapologetic terms (which is not a knock against the film, because Hays code, see below, etc.): "Later, awakening in the night, she lay for a few minutes watching the fire that had dwindled to steady, lesser flames. She discovered nothing in loving that made her ashamed. She discovered no tinge of regret. Instead she felt immensely moral. A triumphant goodness pervaded her body, as if it had been freed from any possibility of sin land all its devils and evil humors driven out" (pg. 134). Letter from Director of Production Code Administration Geoffrey M. Shurlock to William Gordon of Universal-International Pictures, dated December 29, 1954, pg. 1. Production Code Administration records, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences :
While this basic story seems to meet the requirements of the Production Code, this material contains one important element which is unacceptable under the Code and which could not be approved in the finished picture. The element to which we refer occurs in the indication that Ron and Cary have a weekend affair, commencing with the scenes which start on page 59. We cannot approve such casual treatment of illicit sex under the requirements of the Production Code…The termination of scene 188A, accompanied with the following time lapse unmistakably suggests the fact that these two people have spent the night at Ron's place. In addition, the over-all effect of these scenes is an unacceptably suggestive one and we reiterate that we could not approve the indication of a sex affair as is now contained therein. (Page 59)
Quotes (goodreads wouldn't let add all my quotes due to character limit, so I saved them all elsewhere):
Pg. 53: The tiredness, the desire for sleep had dissolved. She felt, suddenly, marvelously alive, alert, filled with energy. She would like to go out and walk, she thought, for miles and miles. Walk over the moon-pale fields, under the burnished silver sky. She could not possibly grow tired. Never. She could walk on forever and ever. She was strong. So much stronger than anyone could guess. She would not, of course, go to walk or go anywhere except to bed.
Pg. 72 (immediately thought of Douglas Sirk): With a sweep of more open road before them, Cary felt a buoyant rise of spirits. Her hesitation to come became incomprehensible. She worried too much about doing things, she informed herself, instead of simply doing them. She seemed to see the world with new and vivid clarity: the smoky tangle of woods, the glisten of streams, the distant hazed hills. Even signboards flashed with startling sharpness of color, as if her eyes had been brought into focus after years of clouded vision.
Pg. 126: He laughed sharply, almost angrily. "Enjoy seeing you!" He repeated scornfully. "When I didn't see you I was so damned miserable I wasn't worth shooting. I couldn't think of anything but seeing you. I couldn't stop wondering what you were doing, who you were with. I've never felt like that about anything before. I've never gone through this kind of hell before. That's why I built this-did this work. Breaking my back on this goddamned barn would at least put me to sleep. That's why I want to marry you."
Pg. 135: He frowned. "Breathless and eager," he said. "I’'m not good at this, mind you. Breathless and eager. Slim. Walking as if you might decide to fly instead. Walking with little feet across the grass. I thought no one who looked like you could ever lie or hurt anybody. Not even for their own good."
Pg. 151-152: “It should be easy to be happy. It shouldn't be difficult to be good."
"You're wrong, of course," he told her. "Why should the most valuable things in the world come cheap? They don't, Cary. You have to be ready to pay.”
"With what?"
"With everything, if you have to. But with one thing, at least.”
Pg. 228: ”You wouldn't be changed," she assured him earnestly. "You couldn't be less of a man than you are."
"I could. Right now I'm learning how easy it would be to let myself be changed."
"By whom, Ron?"
"By you," he told her.
Pg. 229: “Being without you is hell, but it's my hell. Not one I've let somebody make for me. Living here, your way, would be a worse hell."
Pg. 232 (reminds me of Love Affair): “He had accepted certain values as worth while and he would not be deterred from them by the complicated temptations of the world. Mick, she recalled, had told her Ron was an idealist. She had not realized this as being so profoundly true. She had thought of him as having vague ideas of an impossible perfection, not dreaming that he was dedicated to achieve as nearly as possible its actuality. She had not understood that Ron was prepared to reject a lesser fulfillment nor that he was so ready to avoid an alternative.”
Pg. 307-309: He had tried, she perceived now, to make her understand that she could not turn her back upon life except at her own peril. The gift of life was conferred only conditionally upon those who accepted willingly the inescapable obligations it imposed. The obligation must not be turned into a perversion of itself, it must not be distorted into a rejection that amounted essentially to an imitation of its opposite. An imitation of death. She saw that many people had wished to deny life to her; her friends and neighbors, her children, even—strangest of all—herself. Perhaps, as Kay had explained, they and she too were impelled, by the ancient concept of a woman as property, to shut her away because she was a widow. To accomplish a result tantamount to consigning her to a dead husband's funeral pyre. Even she had been impelled, by the same thing, to seek a dark tomb in the house he had built. A new thought suddenly occurred to her. Like Mick, she had learned the hard way that it was wrong to waste life, to let life spill wantonly on sterile ground. It was wrong to turn away from life toward—what?…[Life] must be the heroic gamble of precious insecurity, the wonder of change and chance. She had been such a coward, Cary thought. She had been such a foolish coward.
Tree metaphor!
Pg. 23-24: “Oh, I might sell a few. It's not a popular tree. Not many people know about them. They're tender until they get along to five-year growth. Most treemen don't want to risk handling them. They're a slow tree."
"Slow?"
"They take a good many years to mature. They don't shape up until they're about twelve-year-old growths. Before that they look scrubby. They're expensive too. That's against them from the point of view of most nurserymen.
"Goodness, there doesn't seem to be much that isn't against them," she told him. "Twelve years before they begin to shape up! It doesn't seem practical to grow them if they take so long and aren't popular."
"They're worth it.”
Pg. 116-117: “They don't grow like this. They're too tender the first few years. It wouldn't have a chance in a place like this. The first hard frost would kill it."
…"Of course! Someone planted it there after it was old enough to be safe! Someone who realized it was the perfect place; that the tree someday would be wonderful on the edge of the hill–hill and sky and a perfect tree."
…"It's not a bad sort of miracle," he said gently.
Pg. 309: She remembered how Mick had reminded her of Ron's stubborn faithfulness to the blue trees that were sensitive to frost, difficult to grow, slow to give their reward. She had misunderstood. She had believed Mick implied that she made more difficulties than Ron or any man would willingly endure. That she made more trouble than a reasonable man would put up with. It wasn't, she realized now, what Mick had meant at all. He had been talking, not of her, but of Ron.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 10, 2019
I was at a solid three-star rating for most of the book, but the ending moment was so charming it almost bumped me up to a four. Which leaves me wondering why in the heck the movie makers would have changed the ending of the story so drastically. They got to the same place in the end (sort of) but in a much less satisfactory way than the book does. The crisis moment for Cary is perfectly appropriate for the story, and makes much more sense than the way it happens in the movie. Overall, I enjoyed the book although I thought it had a rather ponderous quality (so does the movie, come to think of it) that made it slow-going at times. For the most part, though, I appreciated its underlying message about life and love and marriage.
February 18, 2023
Quiet little domestic tale, very gentle.... The POV was really anchored to the housewifely protagonist, which I liked, even if it did yield a lot of moments that read like Gender Essentialism: The Romance. Some really lovely moments of emotion-description; this one has stuck with me: "Her sadness deepened; she felt an abstract, impersonal pity for the unhappiness of the person who was herself"
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews