An elderly woman who has spent her life supporting and not arguing with her husband and quietly standing by behaving very properly and accepted the codes of her class and her husband's lifestyle (he was an fco ambassador) is liberated by his death. Her children expect her to carry on being proper and obedient but she makes a bid for her own independence and freedom. In so doing she meets up with an old contact and we learn more about her past and the choices and sacrifices she has made. the book also shows her relationships with her family and their hypocrisy and hidden agendas and indeed she largely stops seeing her family though some connections are re-established towards the end when she sees herself in one of her grandchildren. It's quite short, it's an easy read but it's beautifully written, well observed and very poignant and rather uplifting

What a beautifully written novel this is. "All Passion Spent" is about a woman in her late eighties whose husband has just passed away and who finds herself suddenly with the freedom to do as she likes with the remainder of her life. Up until now, she has lived for her husband and her six children.
The children expect her to sell her home, which she does, and share the remaining years she has with them; rotating months between their homes. But Lady Slane has a very different idea for the years she has left. She wants to live very privately in the countryside with her one devoted servant and far from all of her family. She yearns for peace and quiet. So ignoring all of their demands upon her, she does exactly that.
Not a lot happens in this novel, but it is not what happens that invades the mind and spirit of the one reading it. It is the getting there, the prose, the language of the book that is taken into one's heart, treasured and held there that matters. This is simply a beautiful story and one I won't forget for a long time. ( )

What I loved most about this book wasn’t the plot, the characters, or the larger themes. I loved the style. I loved luxuriating in the lengthy sentences, I loved knowing that no word was out of place. I read not to know the ending, but because getting there was so beautiful.

Nevertheless, a tale about an elderly women finding her feet, perhaps for the first time in her life, after the death of her husband makes a wonderful story. The quiet feistynes of Lady Slane as she tells her children she will be taking a house at Hampstead instead of following their plans makes her a perfect heroine. The cast of characters she assembles there are equally fascinating. And I did enjoy watching Lady Slane go over her life, pulling up ideas of feminism and class roles.

All in all it made a beautiful, peaceful read. ( )

Lady Slane spent her entire life as a politician's wife, raising six children. In the wake of her husband's death she finally has time and space to attend to her own desires. At age eighty-eight Lady Slane chooses to move to her own home, and surroud herself with persons of her own choosing. And what Lady Slane chooses to do is to reminisce about her life, from her marriage in 1860 to the present day. Lady Slane's children presume that their mother has descended into madness, but she holds her ground, refusing to become the dottering widow her children expect. In this novel we learn Lady Slane's history: her thwarted dreams of becoming an artist, her love for her husband, and the restrictions incumbent on Victorian political wives. The book culminates as Lady Slane faces an awakening of unexpected passion. This is a dark and contemplative novel, though there are elements of comedy as well. The Slane children all fit into comic stereotypes, and perform their alloted roles to the point of ridiculousness. These comic elements are necessary, they allow Lady Slane to be sensible, rather than cruel, in cutting herself off from her children at the end of her life. Lady Slane's long life spans the Victorian and Edwardian periods, and if the hallmark of the Victorian era was change, than Lady Slane is certainly a good model thereof. She lived through modernization, the growth of empire, and in her reflections we see the long span of her life. ( )

Wonderful!! A cast of English eccentrics - make this a lovely piece of 1930's writing by a woman who herself was as fascinating as her characters. This is a bittersweet story really of an elderly woman looking back at her life, and finding some independence in her late eighties. Her children (in their fifties and sixties) are a pompous, selfish bunch, who fail to understand their mother. I enjoyed reading this novel all the more, for having this old 1939 penguin copy to read it in.