Sleeping with the Enemy

I’ve had the DVD for several years and watched it several times. Starring Julia Roberts the film is about a young woman, Sara/Laura, abused by her husband who fakes her own drowning to start a new life without him. Of course in her new life she falls in love and lives in fear that her husband will find her again somehow…

I went to a charity shop a few weeks ago. They have a foreign books section and I was delighted to find the book written by Nancy Price, that the film was based on. I couldn’t put it down. It had a lot more depth than the film, helping readers to understand why a lot of women stay with abusive partners. There is also interesting detail; the heroine uses the last of her money to rent a modest apartment, she has no belongings because she’s supposed to have drowned. How can she survive until her new job starts?

If you’ve seen the film and enjoyed it, you’ll enjoy the book.

Love and Einstein

“Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.”

I found this quotation in a book. How nice, I thought and went to look for it. It turned out that Einstein indeed wrote it, but not quite:

“Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do – but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.”

A Farewell to Arms

I finished the book today. If you haven’t read it I recommend it. I didn’t like Catherine Barkley. I felt that her character was too wishy washy, there was nothing about her that you could get your teeth into. I seem to remember thinking something similar of the leading lady in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’.

Anyway, this post is about a strange and interesting coincidence. In the book, while Frederic Henry is having his wounds tended to, the doctor says ‘You will have nothing to worry about if it doesn’t infect and it rarely does now’. Amongst our purchases at the auction in Limoges this week we picked up a leaflet written for French surgeons in 1914. The leaflet explains how German bullets are smooth and leave clean wounds that do not infect, are easy to deal with and heal well. Allied bullets however, left a lot of damage and danger of infection, etc. as they shattered on impact. How is that for propaganda? Even your wounds healed better if you were on the right side.