Reflectons on The Bolter

These numerous dark rainy days have encouraged if not driven me to begin another cycle of reading and I am grateful. I have been saving reviews of books that appear interesting and had chosen The Bolter frankly because I was at the time looking for a good beach book of sex and fantasy.

However the author quickly grasped and brought into my awareness  my choice was much more complex. The intrigue of how the author Frances Osborne came to write the book certainly resonates with my own experience. Late in her adolescence she had discovered the long held secret that one of her great grandmothers was Idina Sackville. The secret once revealed came with a large volume of diaries, letters and photographs.

Idina Sackville's life  is iconic of the debauchery of the 1920s and 1930s. The point of view Frances Osborne brings is however one shared by all women, that of striving to love our mothers and to carry their dreams. She illuminates the plight of Idina and all the immensely talented energetic women born at the turn of the 20th century and their choices become more understandable. Even extremes of anti-social behavior are, if not forgivable, softened by appreciation of the terrible price paid.

I put the book down satisfied that the author is succeeding in her goal of restoration and preservation of family.

I have since begun to realize what a wide scope of historical truth the book also presents. It is prophetic as the horror of the once or potentially great people of the British Empire now in decay takes hold; the outcome of obsessive greed, class and the inevitable perpetual wars.

Yep.  It's quite a book.