Status Updates From The Death of the Heart

Elizabeth Bowen - The Death of the Heart - A Novel 1938
Audible Direct: 12:51 Hours - Narrator: Shannon Tarbet
Commenced:
Heard: 00:00 Hours - Balance: 12:51 Hours
An excellent and enticing review by GR friend, Julie G, aroused my interest in this author and The Death of the Heart.
I hope to start listening to it soon... :))

I did not enjoy reading this book, and I didn’t finish it. I found the adults cruel and selfish, and I did not want to know what happened.

"I may be some kind of monster; I've really got no idea. . . The things I have to say seem never to have had to be said before. Is my life really so ghastly and so extraordinary? I've got no way to check up. . . What I mean is, you and I are the first people who have ever been us."

We all create situations each other can't live up to, then break our hearts at them because they don't.

There was a further pause, with that remarkable tension that precedes the hum when a kettle comes to the boil.

"It may be vulgar to feel that I'm anyone, but at least I'm sure that I'm not anyone else. Of course we have all got certain things in common, but a good deal that we have in common is dreadful. When I so much hate so much I see in myself, how do you expect me to tolerate other people?"

Having lived in hotels where one's bills wait weekly at the foot of the stairs, and no "extra" is ever overlooked, she had it borne in on her that wherever anyone is they are costing somebody something and that cost must be met.

The wish to be seen as loved is part of one's self-respect.

The strongest compulsions we feel throughout life are no more than compulsions to repeat a pattern: the pattern is not of our own device.

We desert those who desert us; we cannot afford to suffer; we must live how we can.

Some Sundays are very sad.

She was disturbed, and at the same time exhilarated, like a young tree tugged all ways in a vortex of wind.