Reading Happy Hour - The Price of Desire (Jo Goodman)

Or Why I Adore Jo Goodman

Today from The Price of Desire (look for a review later on in the week).

Olivia Cole, in this scene, contemplates her captivity (although not physically threatening) and leaves me feeling as though, given the same circumstances, I would attempt to proceed with life in the same way.

It would be as it has been. She'd managed to live on her wits - and not much else - once before. There have been no expectation then that she would be rescued; indeed, she had never thought of her life in terms of captivity. It was as it was. She managed each day as she had each yesterday, and if she allowed herself to think that something might be different on the morrow, it was just in those moments before she slept and only  in the early days when she still believed she could order her dreams. (Chapter 5, pg 111-112)

Not only could I perhaps see myself acting the same as Olivia in these circumstances but I also see this passage in relation to someone in a sort of mental captivity. Depression, perhaps, caused by one's life not being quite what they had hoped and therefore surviving from day to day only out of necessity.

Here, Goodman describes Olivia slipping into shock after she discovers that despite her best attempts not to be hopeful, she had hoped for release and found that hope to be in vain:

Olivia stood and moved quickly to the window. Turning away from her brother, she hugged herself. A shiver when through her in spite of it. Her bones felt brittle, aching with cold. Splinters of ice embedded themselves in her chest, crystallized around her heart. If she exhaled deeply she thought she might see frost on her breath. The whole of her was frozen with fear. She could not think, could not act, could not move. (Chapter 7, pg. 174)

Notice how Goodman builds the reader up in just a few short sentences. The description of Olivia's emotions escalate sentence on top sentence until the climax of what she feels (or doesn't feel, in this case) is reached.

Oh to write like that!