Elizabeth Smart (1) (1913–1986)

The high-pitched tonal uniformity of this raw nerved outpouring is fortunately slim in pages (just 112 in my edition) but it's verging on being overweight when it comes to fabulous imagery. I found my copy in a street library. Whoever had previously read it had some kind of religious obsession and had heavily (urgently) underlined (in pencil) any conceivable reference to anything biblical, god, angels, martyrdom, and flowers. This meant that most pages bore marks but then books can bear that and, if anything, it enhanced my reading. I wondered what I would have made of the book if I knew nothing of Elizabeth Smart's life or had not read the foreword by Brigid Brophy. Nevertheless, there were many wonderful moments. For example,

Parent's imaginations build frameworks out of their own hopes and regrets into which children seldom grow, but instead , contrary as trees, grow sideways out of the architecture, blown by a fatal wind their parents never envisaged.

… (mais)

Hmmm.... so this starts with what i thought was someone planning a murder, an interesting but wrong assumption as it was just an allegory for sleeping with someones husband. On the other hand while the mistaken premise was good the writing was some of the worst stuff i’ve ever read.

I mean it was truly terrible writing with just an absurd amount of mixed metaphors piled on top of one another. I really didn’t think the novel/poem/whatever could recover from my disappointment at the discovery of the actual plot combined with that writing.

However it does improve. Its still quite fragmentary but overall you get a fair understanding of whats happening. The writing is certainly better overall than the openng portions although there are still odd metaphors here and there.
Later it actually felt like they were purposefuly bad at times, maybe a bile filled sarcasm but i definitely felt some sort of dark humour in places.

Overall the almost 18th century, romantic, overemotional, emo, melodrama combining with the modern settings and vocabulary do create something of interest. Still.. a very low 3 stars.… (mais)