The fireworks were really puny this year. I remember during COVID people really went all out. A lot of pent up everything was exploding.
Remembering COVID made me kind of sad. So did hearing the explosions. Plus, today I finished the novel Excellent Women about the lives of 1950s British spinsters, and the book is depressing. It’s well-written and even humorous at times but I found the lives of those poor women who call themselves “rejected” very sad. I know a couple of women like that, and it’s heartbreaking how they try to fill their lives and grab on to tiny, insignificant events to pretend like something is happening.
These days such women tend to be cognitively challenged. And men. I also know a man like that. They lead very orderly, routine-driven existences. In Barbara Pym’s novel, the rejected women fill their lives with church affairs. Today people don’t have that, so it’s harder.
It’s a good novel, if somewhat too deliberate and a bit forced at times. It’s just so hopeless, and I guess it wasn’t a good moment for me to read it.
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