From The Heart
Author: Susan Hill
Published by: Penguin Vintage
Pages: 211
Format: Paperback
My Rating ★★★
Everyone likes Olive Piper. A happy, open-hearted child growing up in the 1950s, her life is contented. When her passion for reading gets her into university she feels sure the world is waiting for her.
But then she makes a mistake – the kind any one of us could make – and faces an impossible choice.
My thoughts:
From the Heart is a coming-of-age story that immediately pulled me in and kept me gripped for the duration. The writing is understated and quietly powerful throughout, telling a moving story of self-discovery and love.
Olive Piper is just entering adulthood. Her emotionally distant mother dies while she is studying for her A levels, and this marks the beginning of a series of events which will greatly alter her life from then on. Surrounded by friends quickly getting engaged, she assumes that eventually she will do the same and settle down into the kind of life her mother always wanted for her. Just as her adult life is beginning, however, a brief and aloof relationship ends in an unexpected pregnancy.
A path is immediately laid out for her, with the plan of a quick wedding and a respectable life for her and her new family, but Olive rejects this proposal and takes the only other route available, giving her baby up for adoption shortly after the birth.
This short novel is captivating, thoughtful and melancholic; much like Olive Piper herself. To begin with, I liked her character and found her love of literature really interesting. She seemed hopeful, independent and hardworking, but as things progressed I began to view her as quite a cold person at times and this made her a little difficult to route for. In parts of the book, she was a hard character to spend so much time with, and despite being told that she felt joy, passion, love and desire, there were moments during which she was just so indecipherable and said so little that it actually felt hard to fully grasp how she really felt.
On the other hand, for much of the story the writing itself was enough to sensitively convey the loneliness and isolation of her situation, allowing readers to feel more sympathetic towards Olive. Perhaps her frostiness was purely a result of the various difficulties she had faced, and her attempt to appear less vulnerable to others. Unfortunately, the downside of this was that it also made her quite tricky to identify with. However, I certainly felt engaged in Olive’s life as it travelled down some interesting and unexpected routes.
Having really enjoyed the slow, quiet pacing of the story from the start, I felt a bit caught off guard when things so abruptly took an unexpected twist towards the end. Whilst the twist worked well within the plot, I felt that the ending perhaps did not offer enough detail or resolution to really satisfy me. When I got to the last page, I felt a longing for just a little more. For such a compelling short read, the somewhat ambiguous ending personally left me feeling slightly underwhelmed.
However, all in all, From the Heart really was a compelling short read with a great deal of heart. I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I expected. Read this one in just one or two sittings and see whether or not you agree with me.
Overall reaction:
Published by: Penguin Vintage
Pages: 211
Format: Paperback
My Rating ★★★
Everyone likes Olive Piper. A happy, open-hearted child growing up in the 1950s, her life is contented. When her passion for reading gets her into university she feels sure the world is waiting for her.
But then she makes a mistake – the kind any one of us could make – and faces an impossible choice.
My thoughts:
From the Heart is a coming-of-age story that immediately pulled me in and kept me gripped for the duration. The writing is understated and quietly powerful throughout, telling a moving story of self-discovery and love.
Olive Piper is just entering adulthood. Her emotionally distant mother dies while she is studying for her A levels, and this marks the beginning of a series of events which will greatly alter her life from then on. Surrounded by friends quickly getting engaged, she assumes that eventually she will do the same and settle down into the kind of life her mother always wanted for her. Just as her adult life is beginning, however, a brief and aloof relationship ends in an unexpected pregnancy.
A path is immediately laid out for her, with the plan of a quick wedding and a respectable life for her and her new family, but Olive rejects this proposal and takes the only other route available, giving her baby up for adoption shortly after the birth.
This short novel is captivating, thoughtful and melancholic; much like Olive Piper herself. To begin with, I liked her character and found her love of literature really interesting. She seemed hopeful, independent and hardworking, but as things progressed I began to view her as quite a cold person at times and this made her a little difficult to route for. In parts of the book, she was a hard character to spend so much time with, and despite being told that she felt joy, passion, love and desire, there were moments during which she was just so indecipherable and said so little that it actually felt hard to fully grasp how she really felt.
On the other hand, for much of the story the writing itself was enough to sensitively convey the loneliness and isolation of her situation, allowing readers to feel more sympathetic towards Olive. Perhaps her frostiness was purely a result of the various difficulties she had faced, and her attempt to appear less vulnerable to others. Unfortunately, the downside of this was that it also made her quite tricky to identify with. However, I certainly felt engaged in Olive’s life as it travelled down some interesting and unexpected routes.
Having really enjoyed the slow, quiet pacing of the story from the start, I felt a bit caught off guard when things so abruptly took an unexpected twist towards the end. Whilst the twist worked well within the plot, I felt that the ending perhaps did not offer enough detail or resolution to really satisfy me. When I got to the last page, I felt a longing for just a little more. For such a compelling short read, the somewhat ambiguous ending personally left me feeling slightly underwhelmed.
However, all in all, From the Heart really was a compelling short read with a great deal of heart. I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I expected. Read this one in just one or two sittings and see whether or not you agree with me.
Overall reaction: