I’ve started to reread My Life with the understanding–more or less confirmed by the text– that each chapter corresponds to a year in her life, and I was able to see what I’d previously sensed. When you assume that a newborn is thinking, “When daylight moves, we delight in distance” or that a one-year old is thinking, “Why would anyone find astrology interesting when it is possible to learn astronomy” or that a four year old thinks, “My mother’s childhood was a holy melodrama,” those observations somehow sharpen.
The later chapters–I’m into her thirties–also brim with good lines such as this, uttered by the 28-year old self who has apparently lost a father, “There was no proper Christmas after he died.” But the grown up chapters are less vivid for an astonishingly simple reason: I’ve only read them once. Like much modern poetry, My Life frustrates first readings and rewards subsequent ones, although I suspect some lines will elude me forever.
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