Bibliography
Mar. 11th, 2012 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyThe Roman Spring of Mrs Stone - Tennessee Williams
This was another one of those 'great novels set in Rome' books I got off that list back last summer. It took me a while to hunt down, as the university library had it in store rather than on the shelves, and working out how to get things from store proved something of a challenge - but I have to say, it was worth it. It's only a slim book, but it packs a lot in.
The story revolves around Mrs. Stone, a widow living in Rome, and charts a few days in her life whilst giving plenty of opportunity for flashbacks to her past as a successful American actress - whose downfall was to try to play Juliet in her fifties. She decided to withdraw from the stage and travel with her devoted husband, who died of a long-standing heart condition while they were in Italy. She has taken the opportunity to retreat from public life in as much as is possible, whilst also carrying on a relationship with a young man who has been introduced to her by a countess who is not, shall we say, all together honest about her reasons for this introduction.
The novel is, I think, the first piece I have read that has taken the onset of menopause as a moment of transitional identity-shift, which is several kinds of awesome. Obviously one could problematise it to death, but Williams makes this shift in biology an opportunity for Mrs. Stone to blossom - and, actually, stone is not an inappropriate name for her, given the rather closed and restricted existence she has lived prior to her time in Rome, despite her success. The novel is essentially a character piece, an exploration of personality, rather than particularly interested in developing a plot. What plot there is primarily concerns itself with character development - it shares a lot in that sense with Williams' plays, which are so focused on character and nuance, but the novel form lets him show us the interior of the characters' heads in a rather different way. And as such, it's a very successful piece of writing, which I am very glad to have read.
This was another one of those 'great novels set in Rome' books I got off that list back last summer. It took me a while to hunt down, as the university library had it in store rather than on the shelves, and working out how to get things from store proved something of a challenge - but I have to say, it was worth it. It's only a slim book, but it packs a lot in.
The story revolves around Mrs. Stone, a widow living in Rome, and charts a few days in her life whilst giving plenty of opportunity for flashbacks to her past as a successful American actress - whose downfall was to try to play Juliet in her fifties. She decided to withdraw from the stage and travel with her devoted husband, who died of a long-standing heart condition while they were in Italy. She has taken the opportunity to retreat from public life in as much as is possible, whilst also carrying on a relationship with a young man who has been introduced to her by a countess who is not, shall we say, all together honest about her reasons for this introduction.
The novel is, I think, the first piece I have read that has taken the onset of menopause as a moment of transitional identity-shift, which is several kinds of awesome. Obviously one could problematise it to death, but Williams makes this shift in biology an opportunity for Mrs. Stone to blossom - and, actually, stone is not an inappropriate name for her, given the rather closed and restricted existence she has lived prior to her time in Rome, despite her success. The novel is essentially a character piece, an exploration of personality, rather than particularly interested in developing a plot. What plot there is primarily concerns itself with character development - it shares a lot in that sense with Williams' plays, which are so focused on character and nuance, but the novel form lets him show us the interior of the characters' heads in a rather different way. And as such, it's a very successful piece of writing, which I am very glad to have read.
