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!

Reading Happy Hour

I'm thinking of starting a recurring thing here called the Reading Happy Hour. Sometimes when I am reading - at least once per book - I come across a certain line or description that makes me want to put down the book and hunt around for someone who is reading the exact same page so I can discuss it. That never happens, sadly. 

So today's Reading Happy Hour comes from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. In chapter 8, Marianne and Elinor are discussing the marital prospects of one Colonel Brandon who at the advanced at of 35 (!) is considered quite the crotchety old man by 17 year-old Marianne. Elinor contends that his age is not so very advanced while Marianne is convinced that romance is not meant for the elderly (apparently those over 25). 

"Perhaps," said Elinor, "thirty-five and seventeen had better not have anything to do with matrimony together. But if there should be any chance happen to be a woman who is single and seven and twenty, I should not think Colonel Brandon's being thirty-five any objection to his marrying her."

“A woman of seven and twenty,” said Marianne after pausing a moment, “can never hope to feel or inspire affection again, and if her home be uncomfortable, or her fortune small, I can suppose that she might bring herself to submit to the offices of a nurse for the sake of the provision and security of a wife. In his marrying such a woman therefore there would be nothing unsuitable. It would be a compact of convenience, and the world would be satisfied. In my eyes it would be no marriage at all, but that would be nothing. To me it would seem only a commercial exchange in which each wished to be benefited at the expense of the other."

Marianne really is the most silly but delightful character. At seventeen in the Regency era, she translates beautifully to teenage girls today. Who, at 13, 15, 17, can ever imagine a person at 35 falling in love? I know at that age I most certainly couldn't. And, like Marianne, I was quite sure that the love of my life was waiting just around the next corner. That's the magic of Austen. She transcends time and her stories are universal. I love Marianne and I love, love, love that at 17, she is the perfect silly match to Colonel Brandon's stodgy 35. For Marianne, love was just around the corner. Her 17 year-old eyes just took awhile to focus on the prize.