Blaming By Elizabeth Taylor - Book review

hello welcome to lil's vintage world this video is a book review of elizabeth taylor's last novel blaming first published in 1976. now this is a short little book it's less than 200 pages it's such an easy read and is the last elizabeth taylor novel that was published is also the last elizabeth taylor novel that i had to read until i finished all of her work so i've read all of her novels now and i need to talk to you about this one because this one was absolutely brilliant so this book starts on a cruise ship hence the cover and we have a married couple um kind of older married couple called amy and nick now amy and nick are married they're on this cruise nick has been poorly and he's sort of recovering and they meet this woman called martha martha is american she's an author and writer and um particularly martha and nick on really really well and then nick dies and he he you know he was poorly anyway but he was sort of recovering but yeah he passes away while on you know this holiday cruise thing and um amy of course very understandably is very upset she feels very lost and martha um who amy wouldn't really be friends with normally they're not really each other's cup of tea sort of thing um martha puts her the rest of her trip on hold and she's like no it's fine she cancels it and she helps amy to bring nick's body back home and to sort out you know going home back to the uk and stuff like that and essentially she puts her holiday away and she helps amy and then when amy and martha are back in england back in london um they form this kind of unlikely friendship so this book kind of starts off being about friendship but then very quickly you realize that it's about death and it's about blaming yourself feeling guilty feeling lonely and and bereavement and the difficulty of being alive when you love someone who has passed away now elizabeth taylor actually wrote this when she was coming to the end of her life elizabeth taylor died in 1975 this was published the year after 1976 and elizabeth taylor had cancer and she was very much aware of her state so to speak and she wanted to get this finished so she got it written and then she was like determined to get the edits and stuff done and she's very much determined to get it finished for her death essentially she never got to see it published um because she did pass away but she was very much aware that she's coming to the end of her life and i think because she was in that state and things that she went through herself i think a lot of that is in this novel there are plenty of references of elizabeth taylor's own life within this novel now in this book amy has a grand well has a couple of granddaughters and one of them when um she's staying with amy uh she's going through her granddad's things and comes across like this medal thing and um she says oh can i have this nanny when you're dead and amy kind of laughs and says viggo you can have it and in real life in the 1950s i know this because it's actually in the um afterward here um written by joanne king um who's elizabeth taylor's daughter and um in the 1950s amy elizabeth's daughter joanne johanna she was in her mom's wardrobe and she came across a dress and uh she said um can i have this dress when you die and elizabeth's tail obviously never forgot that because um although that happened in the 1950s you know 20 years later in the 1970s once elizabeth taylor had passed away joanna was going through her mother's wardrobe and at the bottom there was a bag with the label on it said for joanna and inside was that dress from the 1950s very beautiful and obviously referenced from real life into the book and placed in there and it's just wonderful it makes me think what other snippets of elizabeth taylor's life were placed in here this book is absolutely exquisitely written there's something about elizabeth taylor's writing that i just adore i think elizabeth taylor and people like her like barbara pim as well they're so good at discussing the everyday but what elizabeth taylor does is where as far as him puts more humor and witch to it and you're like oh yeah that's so true elizabeth taylor like punched you in the face with it and it's very hard-hitting it's very somber and it's it's not as funny as barbara pym her work i find i i don't get me wrong i think some bits of her work are really amusing and she can write really funny bits but i think for the most part the things that she discusses about particularly in this book this book's about death and bereavement and finding this unlikely friendship and then guilt of being left behind and it's all those types of things and yeah it just really packed a punch to me it kind of had a similar impact to me this book as when i first read um wuthering heights by emily bronte there's a lie in that that honestly i felt like i'd been punched in the face once i read it um the line is be with me always drive me mad and you do not leave me in this abyss where i cannot find you and i've read that line so many times so so many well obviously i've read it so many times because i can recite it off by heart but it's that feeling of grief that i feel like emily bronte just yes that is grief i i sadly have lost many people close to me in my time and i felt like when i read that passage by uh emily bronte i felt like yes that's it you get me thank you very much i know that i'm grieving correctly and that emotions i feel are sort of normal in a way when someone has departed and it felt very much the same as this you know that that feeling of pain and sorrow and anger and hurt and feeling that you can do nothing about it essentially it was absolutely wonderful and actually i would say if you like weathering heights being with ronnie you'll probably like this as well i absolutely adored it i think it's wonderful i love elizabeth taylor so so much and i can't wait to start my new journey with her which is rereading all her works so there we have it that is it for my rambly review of blaming by elizabeth taylor chat to me all things elizabeth taylor's in the comments section below have you read any of her work yet have you got any on your wish list if so tell me which ones and i shall see you soon for next video bye for now

Channel: Lil's Vintage World

Views: 429

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: ddTU_7Psmdc

Length: 7min 13sec (433 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021