Cousin Phillis

Gaskell is so lovely and sharp and clear, and bizarrely Modernist, despite how she wears the cloak of Victorian sensibility — sort of like Anne Brontë (and i believe she was friends with Anne?)

a placid little book with jagged rocks below the surface.

This novella has apparently been described by many critics as the author's crowning achievement in short fiction. I personally preferred Mr Harrison's Confession, though I can see why this more serious work is generally rated more highly. It is well written and presents a good portrayal of life on the Holman farm. But I found it curiously unemotionally engaging. It ended quite suddenly and I thought it felt almost more like a novel fragment than a novella. I discovered subsequently that further parts were planned but never written.

This isn't as strong a book as [Ruth]in plot or characters, but again it does show a woman who in many respects transcends the limits of her position. Phillis seeks knowledge and puts her male cousin to shame with what she has learned and how she has sought that knowledge. It is an indictment in its way on the expectations of women in that era, but it was a quick listen and Kenneth Branagh was a good narrator for it.

It took me a little while to get in-sync with the language of this book, never having read anything by Elizabeth Gaskell before and it originally being published in 1864. But once I discovered the secret, that is, to slow down my reading speed and let the words, and the vocabulary start to work their magic, I was able to sit back and thoroughly enjoy this lovely book. Back in the day, of no technology as we now know it, words were the way of things. People spoke slower, used many more words and seemed to think more carefully about how they said things…... and it's fantastic once you lose yourself to it!

*** ENG/ITA ***
Read by Elizabeth Klett, excellent LV narrator, this is a quaint, melancholic novella about a young, intelligent girl coming of age in a man's world.

She is too clever for her cousin literally, since he doesn't want to marry her because she too smart!, who comes to love her dearly as a sister and tries to help her trough her experience with first love with his friend, who seems to understand and admire her exactly for her learning, rather that despite it. And then, the second he leaves the country, he quickly forgets her for another... Raise your hand if you wanted to strangle him.

I found myself drawn to this portait even with its sometimes melodramatic twists and slow pace.
**************

Il narratore è un giovane, che show more dopo ver conosciuto bella e intelligente cugina, Phillis, e esseresi affezionato a lei come a una sorella (la ritiene troppo intelligente per sposarla, prendiamolo come un complimento...), assiste con apprensione all'esperienza della ragazza con il suo primo grande amore.

Bellissima novella, passo lento, qualche angolo di melodramma vittoriano perché le fanciulle rifiutate finiscono sempre per rischiare la pelle per esaurimento nervoso?, ma melanconica e dolce al tempo stesso.

Audiolibro in inglese letto da E. Klett (bravissima)! show less

Elizabeth Klett gives another wonderful narration in this free Librivox recording. The story itself I found a bit dated: brain fever? I wonder what illness this actually was! I liked Phillis (this is the spelling used in my Project Gutenberg Kindle edition) and her father.

An older man recounts an instance in his youth when he became fast friends with a local pious family. But in introducing them to his charming boss, he inadvertently causes teenaged Phillis romantic agony. Like Gaskell's other work, this is a slow-paced tale focused on the minutia of a small community's daily lives and feelings. Unlike the other work I've read by her, this has a section in which a woman swoons after hearing her crush has gotten married, and then nearly dies of brain fever (whatever that might be) and stays near death for months. It was so melodramatic and inexplicable to me that it tainted my enjoyment of the earlier section of the novel.