"...And first of all that face. There was that to look at. A long way off, at the end of a table...Why should the mere sight of it make my heart stand still?"-from Olivia
Olivia: A Novel is not necessarily something you'll ever want to experience again. It's a book truly painful to read at times, no matter where you're coming from personally, but particularly so if you ever had an intense crush that pretty much broke your heart.
I didn't expect the writing to be so deep and raw, so pretty and easy to connect with...a crush may not be on the full scale of mutually reciprocated mature love, but it's no less real or painful for being what it is.
Anyone who has ever felt completely gaga over someone else will get what Olivia is going through, no matter how over the top her emotions may seem at the time. ("If it depended on altering the feelings in my heart, I was no more capable of doing that than of plucking the heart out of my breast." So many wonderful quotes that just really speak to you.)
Dorothy Strachey Bussy first published this anonymously under the name Olivia and based it loosely on things that happened to her when she was a teenager away at school and fell in love with one of her teachers. This is something that has been written been many times before, but somehow here it seems fresh and just a little too much to bear at times.
Olivia: A Novel is not necessarily something you'll ever want to experience again. It's a book truly painful to read at times, no matter where you're coming from personally, but particularly so if you ever had an intense crush that pretty much broke your heart.
I didn't expect the writing to be so deep and raw, so pretty and easy to connect with...a crush may not be on the full scale of mutually reciprocated mature love, but it's no less real or painful for being what it is.
Anyone who has ever felt completely gaga over someone else will get what Olivia is going through, no matter how over the top her emotions may seem at the time. ("If it depended on altering the feelings in my heart, I was no more capable of doing that than of plucking the heart out of my breast." So many wonderful quotes that just really speak to you.)
Dorothy Strachey Bussy first published this anonymously under the name Olivia and based it loosely on things that happened to her when she was a teenager away at school and fell in love with one of her teachers. This is something that has been written been many times before, but somehow here it seems fresh and just a little too much to bear at times.
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