On the surface, this is a novel of hope, but there's an oppressive thread of melancholy interwoven in this story.
Her parents, mean & miserable with their fading memories of previous glory her urine soaked grandmother in the crumbling manor house her domineering & unfaithful husband her ghastly mother in law- an eternal victim her morally bankrupt children her weak English lover, supplanted in his wife's affections by a swarthy skinned & passionate foreigner and the ominously silent Sister Benedicta all play their part in deepening the confusion Ruby experiences around who she is and what kind of life she's capable of living. We don't get to see that journey, only the events leading up to Ruby's first tentative steps outside the cocoon of her previous life in which she was smothered by personalties far less sensitive and far more selfish than she. That destruction ultimately frees Ruby to begin a journey of self-discovery.
Different to the other Rose Tremain's I've read & loved (particularly The Colour and Music & Silence), the Letters to Sister Benedicta trace the inner rambles of Ruby's fracturing self after a traumatic year bringing her safe, ordinary and quietly unhappy life tumbling down. Nearly 200 pages of predominantly prose, with little dialogue and white space, and yet, I could hardly put the book down.
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