Her (H.D.)

The next book I was inspired to remove from that teetering tower of VMCs was "Her" by H.D. Not really because I wanted to read it - in fact, I'd struggled through H.D.'s other VMC (Bid me to live) round about the turn of the year. I remembered when I opened it that I'd picked it up before, and put it down again.... But my friend Claire said that she'd been desperate to read "Her" since reading H.D. at university, and I thought that I could pass this onto her when I was done.

It's a very experimental book. So although the synopsis sounded interesting and like the sort of book that I might want to pick up - a book about a girl in her early twenties trying to work out what she wants to do with her life (gosh, typing that suddenly made me feel old as having just had my 27th birthday I am no longer in that category - good job I feel reasonably happy with where I am at the moment!). But somehow the writing, dare I describe it as post-modern (seems like a bit of a cop-out) was so disjointed and confusing that I never really grasped the story properly.

What a struggle! 4 people on Amazon.com have given it 5 stars so it must just be me. Here's hoping for something a bit more "me" in whatever I retrieve next....

Although I could only find an image of the original green cover, which is pictured above, it's actually been published in the green italicised format

Bid me to live (H.D.) 158

Happy New Year! One of my New Year's resolutions is to get the VVV back on track, which has been sporadic over the last few months, and aim to read at least 1 VMC a week AND write it up (I still have two un-blogged titles from last year to do).

So, without further ado, I have spent the second day of 2011 (how strange it feels to type that) reading Bid me to live by H.D. My fiance immediately asked what H.D. stood for, so I need to begin by explaining that it was the pen name for the poet Hilda Doolittle.

This book needs setting in context, because as the blurb on the back, the introduction, and afterword by her daughter explain, the book is profoundly autobiographical, to the extent that it is only the names which have been changed.

The book tells the story of Julia Ashton, who is H.D., who in 1917 lives in London. Her husband Rafe is involved in the war and is a transient character coming and going in the narrative. She has just lost her baby. Julia is involved with the Bloomsbury world, and other "characters" in the novel include the DH Lawrences, Cecil Grey, Ezra Pound). Eventually she escapes London for Cornwall.

I struggled through this; the synopsis appealed to me - wartime setting, interesting characters/background, my beloved Cornwall, but I just found it disjointed and difficult to read and never really got to grips with Julia.

H.D. has written one other VMC - Her - which I picked up in Oxfam on the 31st and which was what prompted me to read Bid me to live. According to her page on wikipedia though, she was far more prolific than her VMC output might suggest with a number of collections of poetry and prose.

This one has just been published once by Virago, in an original green edition.