- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd (May 2003)
- ISBN-10: 0141013931
- ISBN-13: 978-0141013930
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Basing this story on real journals of the period, Susanna Moore recreates the lives of English nobility in India in 1836, just prior to the reign of Queen Victoria. Lady Eleanor Oliphant, through whose journal the story unfolds, accompanies her brother Henry to India when the family fortunes plummet and the King appoints Henry to be Governor-General in India, his base to be in Calcutta. Reflecting the attitudes of the early British colonialists, Eleanor tells us that she has twenty-seven servants, five of whom are needed whenever she washes her hands. More reflective than some of the other Englishwomen she meets, she admits that "The danger of this place is that I am learning to deny myself nothing." By contrast, her sister Harriet, also on the trip, finds India to be exhilarating, freeing her from the restrictions placed on women of her station at home and allowing her to make a real, independent life for herself.
Charged with winning over Afghanistan for Britain and preventing it from falling under the influence of Russia, Henry and his entourage travel from Calcutta to the Punjab to win the help of a raja there. Accompanied by ten thousand traveling companions, including his sisters and his household staff, Henry's caravan involves ten miles of beasts and men. As they travel in relative comfort west across the subcontinent, Eleanor records outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever, drought, and starvation so severe that 400,000 local people die in one area alone. Many British deaths occur en route, and crippling loneliness sometimes overtakes the travelers, but Eleanor finds herself unexpectedly growing from the experience. In Delhi, where they meet the Emperor, Eleanor admits, "I find I am no longer very fond of Englishmen."
One Last Look is character-driven, rather than plot-driven, and Moore's depiction of the language and attitudes of the times is flawless--formal, restrained, and often self-indulgent. Though real memoirs were used as resources, Moore compresses time and scenes in ways uncommon to real memoirs, employing a novelist's sense of drama and a psychologist's sense of observation to lend the novel a real beginning, middle, and end. Lovely observations and descriptive passages revealing the vastness of India provide a welcome contrast to the smallness of the lives of their colonizers, whose insensitivity is presented with considerable irony. Though Eleanor grows enormously from her time in India, she never becomes a character with whom the reader feels immense sympathy, and it is clear that that is not Moore's intention. When Eleanor admits that "Nothing will ever be the same" after her India experience, the reader must also think of the extent to which that is the case for her Indian "hosts." Mary Whipple
Format:Paperback
Slow moving but beautiful I enjoyed this tale of British families in India and the effect the place had on women so far away from home.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A truly complex and puzzling read is this. Despite its delightful and attractive cover, this is very hard-going with 'vague' people and characters. Whilst amusing in parts, the two main ladies (characters) in this appear distinctly eccentric, and there is also hints at possible incestuous 'tendencies' with one sister and a brother? I'm really unsure, as the whole thing is such difficult reading... I kept persevering, but gave up at around a hundred or so pages left.
I may give this another go at some time in the future. I have read some excellent books lately, and I know that follow-ups can seem a bit of a let down sometimes, and so it would only be fair to perhaps start this one again at a later date.
I may give this another go at some time in the future. I have read some excellent books lately, and I know that follow-ups can seem a bit of a let down sometimes, and so it would only be fair to perhaps start this one again at a later date.
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