Customer Reviews

Seven Ages (Flamingo)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It is difficult to imagine that such a rich, lush, evocative book could be as under-appreciated as this books seems to be. The central character, Emma, is a retired English midwife. She has retired to a cottage in the English countryside where she spends her days gardening, trying to keep peace between her two grown, but still bickering, daughters, and listening to the voices from her own fireplace. They tell the story of seven generation of women who lived lives that seem little changed from century to century despite the goings on in the rest of the world. Pregnancies and child-births, rapes and persecutions, lovers and husbands, and always the comforting magic of herbs that soothed their labors and healed their wounds.

The stories interweave and intertwine like the plants in an herb garden always with a sense of magic and mystery. What emerges is a chronicle of women's lives over centuries and, despite the changes of time, there is ever and always the sameness of giving birth, loving men both good and bad, listening to one another's troubles, and caring --- caring for one another, for children, for wounded and trobled men. This is a beautiful, seductive book.