Sonia Hillsdon

Seeking and Losing

A short novel poignantly contrasting the yearning optimism of Cathy as a VIth former with her despair as a young widow. The changing styles reflect the variety of her moods from hope and joy to grief and anger.  

From the book:  

Next, news from the English front. Poor Whitey. So mutely dumb in her appeals to me to give in, give up and become identified with her in mutual love of Eng. Lit. But I can't, Maggy, I can't. I care too much sometimes. I identify too closely with what we are dissecting and, though one half of me is longing to show that I do understand; though my mind, even while I' m silent, is delighting in finding the right words to express what I have understood; I just cannot confess my comprehension, lest I become involved, lay myself open to the emotional aura that poor S.W carries with her. I envy you your objective dissection - it can't seem to happen in English and I don't want to lose my identity by allowing S.W to see how similar are our reactions, because then she would have within her grasp the intellectual companionship that she seems so pathetically to seek. I prefer the abrasive effect of a mind far other than my own, perhaps because I'm not yet confident enough that the separateness of my own thinking is sufficiently marked. In other words, the result (cause?) of all this convoluted thinking was another of our classroom confrontations, when I was longing to say, but was put off by her too much eagerness to hear. It was Hopkins' "Spring and Fall". Full of the indefinable melancholy you love to wallow in. And I knew, I knew. I knew exactly why the wood of fallen leaves made the young child weep. Appreciated completely Hopkins' terrible warning to her (another Margaret!) that, when she's grown up, just being human will break her heart. 'La condition humaine' as our French friends would put it.

Hillside Books £3.95  

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