On Books & Reviews

A troublesome journey…

HELL HEAVEN & IN-BETWEEN: One Woman's Journey to Finding LoveHELL HEAVEN & IN-BETWEEN: One Woman’s Journey to Finding Love by Kathryn Hurn

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It took me almost a month to finish this book. Was it so long that it deserved that time or was it so intense that I couldn’t read more than few chapters a day?

This book was more like reading someone’s diary than a women’s search for just love. It was her entire journey from where she realised who she was, what she has done and how to make the difficult decision of moving on and what follows.

If I wasn’t gifted this book to read and review by the author, I would have probably given up somewhere in the middle. But I just needed to do justice to it and believe that it would make a difference. Somewhere I was so engrossed in Lucy’s emotions that I started feeling those in my relationship as well. Somewhere I just wanted Lucy to move on and to get what she wanted out of life. I knew she and the love of her life would end up together. Kathryn gave that up in the beginning of Volume 2, but how and how long would her ordeal last was not explained. I felt Lucy had the patience of a Victorian heroine something which seems to reoccurring in modern times – while one part of us fights to be independent the other wants to be loved and be provided for irrespective. Ambition does not take away the desire to be loved. Work does not satisfy us emotionally as it would a 21st century man for whom money is more important than a loving relationship.

The book takes you on a journey and you need to patient to let it unravel for you. My three star rating is for some loose ends in the book and the ending. It feels like it could be better rounded off than rushed into given the pace of the earlier portions. I definitely feel it could be way shorter and edited some more.

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Random thoughts

Day V

Caught between three spaces.

Reality, surreal and something you wish didn’t exist quite about then!

I belong to a particular age and I’m not married and thankfully happily so.

I don’t want to know the complications of a married life, of in-laws and raising kids nor do I want to know how miserable life gets when you grow old. I don’t want to know what happens when someone fiercely independent becomes helpless in one go. I don’t want to know the shock and the frustration.

Yes, I don’t want to experience the frustration of having to do things on my own which previously for a long time was done for me smoothly. I do things on my own now. People around me, who I care about, are waaaaaay past that league. I understand their frustration and try and help out but hello I need to do my own things as well. Give me the time, sorry the breathing space – aur kitna jaldi?

Feel like I’m living a full existence without an anchor. Floating in and out between the three spaces.

Wanting to move towards the surreal but reality and the not so wanted reality say hey! I need you to listen to me now! If u don’t, grrrrrr…

And come to think of it, its just the beginning. Maybe I’ll learn in the near future…

I’ll fall, but I’ll recover for sure or so I believe. I still have a lot of years to live, then why don’t I feel like that?

That needs an answer and real soon.

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