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Wednesday, March 12, 2014

THE PROFESSOR OF POETRY by GRACE MCCLEEN

The Professor of Poetry


I liked the Guardian's description of Professor Stone - "brilliant and utterly clueless". That quite sums up our heroine's description. Couldn't be better put anyway.


She has just been diagnosed with cancer and fearing the worst is given the all clear. Elizabeth Stone now feels the time is right for her to do something that she wanted to do. See the connection between poetry and musicality. A difficult thing for me to understand was that poetry can communicate non verbally. 

Elizabeth decides to go back to her own college and there embarks or rather renews her relationship with her tutor Edward Hunt, now so much older and more set in his ways. His feelings for Elizabeth are apparent from the beginning - they were there from the time he first met her - but Elizabeth is oblivious to the most normal human interactions possible. It makes her a difficult, irritating character at times but that is the whole package of Elizabeth. Simple and seemingly living in a bubble.

This was not a book to be read in a hurry. The characters are sometimes semi tragic, sometimes comic. Irritating at times and sometimes so placid you want to shake them. 

The book had me plodding along at times and at times I was eager to know what Elizabeth would do next. Definitely not for everyone but certainly will appeal to many.

On a non book note, my hotmail account has been frozen! apparently they are suspicious as I am logging in from Australia so that I need new codes etc which they do not send to another email account I have given them. So anyone who has sent me emails, please forgive me. Its not that I am not answering any but I just can't get into my account. 

2 comments:

  1. I have to be in the right mood to tackle a book like that even though I've known quite a few brilliant but clueless people.

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