I read a fantastic chapter from this book yesterday. What I had read before (and since) was all right; stories about girls and women and art and paintings and life. None of them quite extraordinary. None of them feeling like this one did.
It was the one about Angelica Kauffman's painting 'Portrait of a Lady'.
The first four pages were extraordinary. Maria chasing Frances, trying to read her poem. Finding out (spoilers!) Frances is actually dead.
The aching pages following, of loneliness and paintings and company. And the wonderful end. I actually cried. Usually when I say I cried, I might get watery eyes or an achy throat. But now I had actual tears. Stuck on my lashes.
It was the whole her-best-friend-and-possibly-lover-is-dead, the life Frances had despite, the inability to move Maria had because. And it was the friendship between two women in the 18th century and the life it was given. Not the empty compliments on a dinner in a pretty Austen-like novel; but the vibrant life anyone of us could lead. And the abrupt stop and immovability when one of them died.
Oh, I want the whole world to read that chapter. I wish I could have it unread and read it again for the first time. The delicious, pleasurable pain of it.
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